The Need for Nuclear Power

The Committee to Review Power Requirements, which has the task of producing the estimates of future electricity demand, has developed the idea that electricity demand in New Zealand should be growing at 7% per year.

This figure is supposed to stand regardless of changes in economic conditions and structures which might bring about changes in energy use patterns, and tends to take on the function of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Because the electricity demand is presumed to exist, generation capacity is brought forward, and the existence of this capacity necessitates an effort to sell the surplus electricity.

However, the system is also unsound in this respect: the electricity demand growth forecast by the committee is being shown to be completely incorrect.

For the last three or four years, electricity demand has not been growing at anything like the proposed rate.

Thus, the Committee to Review Power Requirements is now forced to state that demand will grow by an average of 10% per year over the next five years, just to get their estimates back in line.