Copeland Gordon: Electricity and Gas Industries Bill — In Committee 
Copeland Gordon: Electricity and Gas Industries Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:620;Page:15722] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I shall take a call on Part 2 and speak to exactly the same clause that Roger Sowry has just spoken to—namely clause 22. In some ways I agree with a lot of what he said. However I also thought that at times he wandered off into a mist of hypothetical unreal situations. So let us get down to a little bit of reality about the clause. Firstly when the bill went through its first reading and then to the Commerce Committee the limitations on lines companies for investing in non-renewable generation were amounts of no greater than 25 megawatts or 10 percent of the maximum demand of the lines owned or operated by the person. The bill of course has now been amended to provide for a limitation of the greater of 50 megawatts or 20 percent of the maximum demand of the lines owned or operated by the person—namely a doubling of the situation which every party in the House should be very happy about. Why has that happened? It happened in a rather unusual way. When Meridian Energy decided to pull the plug on Project Aqua we had an urgent debate in the House about that matter. In the course of the speech that I gave on that occasion I asked the Minister the Hon Pete Hodgson why on earth we had those restrictions on lines companies of 25 megawatts or 10 percent. In response he was good enough to say that I had a good point and that he would go to 50 and 20 percent. So on the spot he basically doubled the amount. That was obviously a very very worthwhile move. 
Therefore the question now arises—and this is Roger Sowry’s point—of why we have any restrictions at all. I must say that I have some sympathy with that point of view. I think though that he completely overstated the case in a couple of areas. 
Firstly there is nothing to stop a lines company from building a small coal-fired plant or a small gas-fired plant because those companies can go up to 50 megawatts. Roger Sowry’s was a completely erroneous statement. The second and more important point is as he has just said that the situation is very very simple if a lines company at any point in time does discover gas—and let us hope that they do; I certainly hope that they do because we desperately need more fuel—or indeed if it wants to build a large new coal-fired station which United Future would support 100 percent. Like Peter Brown we believe also that coal is a resource that we should exploit in this country. Recently I gave my support to Mighty River Power’s proposal for example to try to convert the Marsden B power station to coal and I hope that it is successful in its resource consent for that. However the reality right now is that we do not need lines companies to buy up existing plants. There is no point in our just simply reshuffling the pack and swapping the ownership of existing non-renewable generating companies from the present generators to lines companies. 
The urgent need this nation has right now is for brand new generation. We need to have brand new generation and we need it quickly. We need it to utilise any fuel that is available frankly. If the day comes when a lines company does want to build above the 50 megawatts or 20 percent level in coal or in gas then I have the assurance of the Hon Pete Hodgson who has given me his word which I am recording in  
Hansard 
 tonight that in those circumstances the company simply has to come to him and we will very quickly whip a bill through the House to permit that to happen. Obviously if we do that we will have the support of every party here so it should not be a problem. I point out to Roger Sowry that the gap between discovering some new gas off the Canterbury Bight for example and actually processing it to generate electricity would in any event be several years long and we would have ample time to whip some legislation through the House to permit that to happen. 
A straw man is being set up here tonight. The goal is to get new generation going and to encourage that. The other example that I gave to Pete Hodgson was that I know Solid Energy will probably go out to tender at some time for a 100 to 150 megawatt coal-fired plant near Westport.