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New Zealand has potential to become a world leader in the export of renewable energy, though it will need to overcome a number of high hurdles - including community resistance to resource development.
A report by global professional services company GHD indicated New Zealand was relatively well placed to reach 100 percent renewable energy if critical barriers were removed, such as access to the national power grid.
GHD New Zealand technical director Nick Eldred said there were many opportunities to earn export dollars from renewable energy.
"We are already seeing some ideas being put around," he said.
"At Tiwai Point, Meridian (Energy) has been investigating alternatives to Tiwai (aluminium smelter) with green hydrogen or green ammonia being made at Tiwai, which can be exported overseas.
"We're seeing data centres start to come into New Zealand, where they can brand themselves as using green energy for data centres."
But he said the first challenge to face was to ensure New Zealand was able to meet its own energy demands, with challenges to overcome such as supply disruptions and community opposition to project development, which was backed up by the survey.
The survey of New Zealand energy leaders found 72 percent indicated supply disruption was their number one concern for transitioning to renewables.
Three quarters (75 percent) of leaders cited community opposition to project development as one of the biggest obstacles to getting resource consent for projects.
Eldred said the research pointed to a need for urgent change, with a focus on fit-for-purpose consenting, bold reform, enhanced grid capacity, co-funding and increased collaboration between government, business and community needed.
"We know transitioning to sustainable, clean energy is a priority for most New Zealand businesses and if we can overcome the remaining barriers for supply and demand then we have the potential to generate excess, secure, reliable and affordable power," Eldred said.
"We are seeing significant and positive progress towards our aspirational goal of 100 percent renewable energy by 2030 but there are continuing difficulties we need to overcome with our grid capacity, our consenting processes, social licence for solar and wind, and how we agree on funding the transition."
Eldred said there was scope to improve community support for renewable energy projects by giving more weight to the benefits of climate change mitigation and carbon emission reduction.
He said another way to smooth opposition to resource developments was to offer benefits to affected communities.
"I mean, we certainly are already seeing iwi having ownership here in the geothermal space for various reasons. It can also be community funding."
He said there was progress being made toward a national energy strategy, but more work was needed to keep the ball rolling.
"As a country we have a real opportunity to both transition our energy supply to meet our emission reduction targets and potentially export clean energy to global markets."
