350 submission today to CC council electricity purchase

Below is the submission to the Christchurch City Council presented by Charles Drace on behalf of 350.org Christchurch on Thursday, Feb 9, 2017.

1. Reference to David Bedford, ECan, moral obligations of councils and considering the effects of council decisions on people outside the council's boundaries.

2. The report to the council re the electricity contracts that will be discussed later in this council meeting said there was no community consultation because they could not identify any community groups affected. When a decision on housing is imminent, housing advocacy groups are consulted. Surely community groups that advocate for reducing carbon emissions should be consulted when the proposal could lead to increasing carbon emissions.

3. Electricity procurement process , option 2, was not properly researched or considered. I recognise the problem for councils in following recommendations of staff when those recommendations are based on info from an outside source like Energylink which might not have performed a comprehensive analysis.

They say in 5:18 that the extension of the Huntly Station from 2018 to 2022 is because of fears that without Huntly other generators would not have enough backup. Yes, that is what they said publicly but if that were true Genesis would not have planned to close Huntly in 2018. Greenpeace discovered that the wholesale electricity price for every provider is based on that of the most expensive generator. As Huntly is the most expensive generator in the country all generating companies would have seen their profit margins decreased if Huntly closed.

More pertinent to this discussion, they say in 5.16 that 'all generated electricity is combined on the general spot market.' That's not true. They ignored the fact that there is an EcoSpot market of renewably generated electricity that is available.

Those are only two examples of the lack of comprehensive analysis.

4. When I discovered on Tuesday that the electricity procurement contract was on today's agenda and I read through the recommendation which is to continue with the MBIE AoG contract with even more polluting generators than with the CCCs current supply contract, I knew there had to be a better way. It took me exactly 2 hours to not only find a carbon zero certified supplier but to also procure a quote for providing electricity to the council at the same cost as proposed in Option 1 through the MBIE AoG contract.

This provider provides totally renewable electricity to many large electricity users including Fulton Hogan, the Environment Commission, ACC, Les Mills, Human Rights Commission, Queenstown Airport, parts of Auckland University of Technology and many others. They are currently in negotiations with the Christchurch Hospital Board and Auckland City Council.

Because they are carbon zero, if future governments impose a carbon tax, which they must at some stage, CCC will not have to pay the carbon tax on their electricity usage.

The company recently won 2 of the 10 Sustainable Business Network's annual awards.

The company, in association with Juicepoint and Charge.Net.NZ are the leading suppliers of charging infrastructure and electricity for electric vehicles and the expanding network of EV charging stations.

The company is wholly New Zealand owned. 49% of the company is owned by Pioneer Energy, the Otago based community owned power generator.

The company has a sister company that can provide the council or entities of the council with ECO audits and carbon mitigation advice.

If the CCC contracted the company to provide 20 GHWs [or 1/3rd] of its electricity requirements over the next 30 months, it would save the carbon output equivalent to putting 660 electric cars on the streets of Christchurch.

350,org Christchurch submits to this council that it buy 20GWHs annually of its electricity from Ecotricityand then evaluate over the next 30 months with the object of going to 40 GWHs in the next contract round.

The mechanics of putting this in place are simple. Council staff would identify a number of CCC owned or operated buildings and sites whose annual electricity requirements add up to 20 GWHs. Ecotricity would provide directly to those buildings.

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