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Aug 11, 2021Liked by Bernard Hickey

Had to happen. Mass immigration has finally come home to bite them on the bum. A million new immigrant-users added to the population in 20 years without adding to power generation.

And, to add to the problem, Government launches a program to convert vehicle inventory from Internal Combustion Engines to Electric without first ensuring there will be adequate electricity to run them. Failure

The power brown-out on Monday night is the kiss-of-death to the EV program

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Aug 11, 2021Liked by Bernard Hickey

Cynical me is internally chortling at EA arse-covering. Machine-gun announcements of review results pending next year lead me to imagining flurries of internal memos and hastily arranged meetings.

Can't say all this wasn't foreseeable. Content to have sold my Mercurial holdings (gained from their swallowing of the Great River) this tax year, at 400%.

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FYI from an emailer: Question, with the big push to go carbon neutral given that NZ is an island and amounts for less than 1% of 1%, and with the move away from wood burning heating and gas heating, particularly the push for electric powered cars, how can NZers be sure that the price of electricity will remain affordable, and how will we be sure the existing supply will meet demand without the use of coal?

Coupled with the future increase in population and infrastructure upgrades required to fulfill the needs of medium density housing, how will we keep up?

Crikey we can’t even keep up with our roading and sewerage network.

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Thanks Bernard. Can you explain why the government allows its majority-owned companies to not only not endorse government policy (100% renewable electricity) but to actively work against it? Surely that's taking arms-length management a bit far. Likewise, Genesis is holding well over 1000 MW of consented renewable supply that they have gone very quiet on. Wouldn't such large decisions have some involvement from the board?

Why is it so hard for new entrants to enter the market? For a long time there was only one, Tilt Renewables, and even they sold first all the electricity (to Genesis) and then the whole company (to Mercury).

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