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Meridian quits $2 billion wind project

by Whaleoil on January 20, 2012

Meridian Energy has bailed out of a $2 billion wind farm.

Maybe because wind farms are a crock, difficult to make money, wreck skylines and are generally bad for the environment.

But then I saw “greenie” (and hypocrite) Anton Oliver objected to the wind farm. FFS  is he a greenie – therefore should be pro-wind farms, or is he not?

So what I’d like to know is what it was that turned Anton oOliver against wind farms?

Perhaps, like Bio-fuels, electric cars, genetic engineering, and organic food, wind turbines are an utter and complete con and Meridian have come to understand this.

 

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  • Lesley

    Mark Binns (previously boss of Fletcher Construction) is now heading up Meridian. He is knowledgeable and has common sense. Anton Oliver? Were they going to be in his “backyard”? 

    • Gazzaw

      All of Central Otago appears to be Anton’s backyard. I actually agree on this one as wind farms are ugly, noisy beasts and the Maniatoto is just not the right spot for them.  What I do not like is the arrant nimbyism displayed by Oliver & Sydney et al and I wonder whether their zealotism (is that a word?) would be quite so strident about a nuclear power station on the Kaipara.

      Where precisely do the Greens expect us to source power from? No hydro dams, no fossil fuel stations, no nuclear, no tidal turbines & now no wind farms.

      Is Anton grooming himself for a role in politics? Is the pope a Catholic? He’s got perfect qualifications -student and footy player so never had a real job. Having an ex AB on board would be great for the Greens PR machine.

      • Anonymous

        WE’LL GET ALL OUR POWER FROM THE SUN LOL!!!!

    • Mcv

      Typical absentee greenie – doesnt hatchet live in France ?  Doesnt a large chunck of the electricity he uses on a daily basis in France come from Nuclear ?

  • Scanner

    Poor old Anton, busted, of course he’s green just so long as he doesn’t have to look at them, hypocrite

  • Gazzaw

    The Greens could do a lot worse than have Anton stand for the right Dunedin electorate in 2014.
    Local hero, academic & a lot of mates in the Dunedin Establishment. He could well kick some labour arse and become the Greens first democratically elected MP.

    • Anonymous

      He could well kick some labour arse and become the Greens first democratically elected MP.

       Jeanette Fitzsimons  won the electorate seat of Coromandel in 1999.

      • Gazzaw

        I stand corrected Ciaron. I must remember that for my next session of Trivial Pursuit.

  • Lofty

    The correct decision was made in this case.

    Windfarms are uneconomic lice on the landscape!

  • Kiwikea

    Intrigued by the fact Mike Hosking interviewed Oliver from London. Typical Greenie, telling people how to live and not even being there!

    • Mully

      I heard that’s why the Green do so well in overseas votes. Idealist voting for the watermelons cos they don’t have to live under them.

  • Igi

    25 new gas wells proposed in Taranaki and the scrapping of some useless bird shredders. It’s been a good week!

  • Camtay

    he was a bed mate of Robyn Malcolm……… ‘nuf said

    • ConwayCaptain

      Must have been hard up

      • Mully

        I don’t think anything would have been hard up…

  • insider

    The other big issue is that it is a long way from the major power consumption and  there are other wind farm sites that will be easier to build (consents wise) and closer to NI cities.

  • Engineer

    Yes wind farms are a con (economically and electrically).  But as an Engineer they are cool (large spinning mass, big blades etc).

    insider, the location for the national grid isn’t ideal, but they would be great for pummed storage as the best locations for this ae in the south island.

    WO, electric cars on the other hand are not a con, but not for the reasons you think.  Fossil fuel will run out eventually, and there will be less smog from electric cars (power station burn stuff beter).

    We just need something like this for the electric cars
    http://web.ece.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/powerelectronicsresearch
    http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/worlds-largest-car-makers-are-line-auckland-universitys-new-technology-132393

    • HeinB

      As a fellow engineer I have to agree, they are absolutely beautiful engineering structures. They give a bit of hope that maybe one day we will advance to the point where we move away from the ‘dig it up and burn it’ plan. 

      I don’t see where the “con” is, the wind blows against the blades, the blades turn a generator, the generator generates power, the power is fed into the national grid with some conditioning electronics and somewhere else they are shovelling the coal into the furnace at a bit lower rate.

      Electric cars are also immensely practical, 99% of my trips are less than 10km for a round trip. Ideally I would have a small plug-in electric for these trips and a regular old dinosaur burner for the longer trips.

      The biggest economic problem I see with electric cars for our short trips is that they will gut what is left of the automotive repair and spare parts industries. When you get rid of a petrol or diesel engine you also get rid of thousands of moving parts. Service costs on a electric motor is some new brushes once or twice in the car’s lifetime, maybe some new bearings once (unlikely) and of course the batteries (which can also be upgraded as new technology becomes available)

      • Engineer

        The con is economically they cost a bomb and only work with subsidies.  The Environment con is the global warming nonsense.

        And Engineering wise they are two variable for the national grid so over a certain % of them is no use, also they require even more equipment and backup power stations on a 1:1 basis due to the inability to turn the wind on when you need it.

        As for dig it up and burn it, exponential growth will get rid of that all by itself when we simply run out of stuff to dig up and burn.

        Electric cars getting rid of jobs is hard to tell as we will need a lot more jobs to maintain charging stations, and buried pickup wires, also factor in the extra generation plants required etc.

    • Apolonia

      What’s the point of electric cars, all the cords would get tangled up.

  • Sadu

    Why don’t we put all the wind farms onto the hills of wellington? Lots of wind, close to the consumers, and they can’t be uglier than the wellywood sign can they?

    • Steve (North Shore)

      Wellington is full of NIMBYs. Control freaks. The Public Service is full of experts with opinions about who should do what, as long as they don’t have to be involved.
      Wellingtonians have a chip on both shoulders, they can’t understand why they are not the biggest City in NZ
      I say build Nuclear Power Stations in Wellington, just hide them behind all of the hills

  • Anonymous

    Wind turbines are useful for specific uses, such as pumping water, which are not time-dependent. As contributors to the national grid, they are an expensive distraction.

    The wind in NZ blows mainly in the spring, when hydro flows and snowmelt mean that value and prices are at their lowest. When peak flows are required, they are frequently AWOL.

    Without back-up gas generation, the grid operators have to work on the assumption that wind energy won’t be available when needed.