Seldom, are we offered a chance to rectify a past mistake and simultaneously avoid repeating that error in the future. It’s just possible such an opportunity might arise from Rio Tinto’s announced intention to sell the Tiwai Point Aluminium smelter near Bluff.

Forty years on, the construction of the Lake Manapouri – Tiwai Point hydro-industrial complex has clearly failed to realise its architects’ vision of national prosperity flowing from hydro-electric based industrialisation on a grand scale.  While there have been local economic benefits to Southland, a national perspective suggests that all that has been created  is another primary industry by way of exporting ‘solid’ electricity. It is highly questionable whether an enterprise which consumes 15% of the Nation’s electricity, produces only 4.5% of our export earnings, employs 0.06% of the national workforce and sends all its profits to an off-shore corporation, actually provides a sufficient return on our national investment in the construction of the Manapouri power station and subsequent subsidising of the Tiwai  Point smelter.

Sale of the smelter will provide an opportunity to re-negotiate the price paid for Manapouri’s power. Better still, its closure would permit that generation capacity to be used more efficiently and productively. Imagine the incentives and the number of jobs which might result if that electricity was sold to small and medium businesses at the present discounted rate.

Most importantly, closing Tiwai and redistributing the electricity from Manapouri would close the lid forever on Contact Energy’s proposal to build another dam on the Clutha. There are many good reasons why such a dam shouldn’t be built, but even the most passionate advocates of ‘Think Big’ industrial strategies would have to concede that the grid contribution from Manapouri (more than the combined output of four additional Clutha dams) will finally dispose of that bad idea.

Graye Shattky

Did you know?

a.    New Zealand consumes approx. 40,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity each year;

b.    Manapouri  provides approx. 5000 GWH per annum;

c.    Together, the Roxburgh and Clyde dams produce 3,700 GWh per annum;

d.    Estimated production from Contact Energy’s proposed four dams will total approx. 4,370 GWh. (Luggate – 500 GWh, Queensberry – 850 GWh, Beaumont  - 1070 GWh, Tuapeka Mouth – 1950 GWH)