Everywhere I turn Contact Positive Energy is defining me out of existence – on television, radio and daily broadsheets. Even web news sites are wrapped by it. Their flashing links lure the reader off to Contact Positive Energy for “energy solutions” to our “energy gap”. Wonderful options are omitted – community solutions, urban planning, solar farming, “smart” tech. solutions, alternatives to smelted metals, electronic communications …..?
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In Mid 2004 Contact Energy launched a $2 million dollar campaign in New Zealand (pop. 4 million) in an attempt to generate a debate about a looming “energy crisis.” Company spokespeople claimed they were doing it to stimulate a wide debate on the issue as best as they could from their position of “interest”. The admission of self-interest is honest and to be commended. It still does not detract from the general evidence that the education campaign is primarily a branding and lobbying exercise.
Note –most of the major companies in the Fossil Fuel & Bulk-electricity Generator sector invest in Greenwash with carefully engineered “Electricity Future Forums”, education modules, research contracts and sponsorships.
Background:
In the 1970s New Zealand had developed the Maui gas field with sufficient fuel to provide the nation’s household needs for hundreds of years. It is being flared off to make chemicals such as methanol and to generate electricity at such a rate that in 2003 it was suddenly announced the field will be exhausted within a couple of years. Contact Energy owns major rights in in this field, owns 3 gas-fired turbines for generating electricity and is the largest wholesaler and retailer of gas and is largest electricity generator.
At the same time the limitations on global supplies of oil and gas are becoming obvious. New Zealand is experiencing strong growth in demand for electricity (up to 5% per anum) and the nation is beginning to debate whether this growth in demand is sustainable.
Several other important factors are at play too. in 2004 Contact Energy was undergoing ownership changes and there is a renewed push by overseas bankers to take control of those electricity utilities still owned by New Zealand communities. These included Vector (New Zealand’s largest electricity network owner) and PowerCo.
The failure of the bulk electricity generators to agree to a self-regulatory regime and an increasingly fragile grid-supply caused the Government to establish the New Zealand Electricity Commission in 2003. One of its first tasks is to establish regulations governing who can supply the grid and how they can connect with the national grid.
The decisions of the Electricity Commission are crucial to the future of New Zealand as a raft of new technologies are emerging that will give households and small businesses new opportunities to reduce demand and even co-generate. The combination of ‘smart’ appliances that can respond to grid signals, ‘smart’ meters that can ‘talk’ with the grid and small-scale electricity generators pose a serious threat to Bulk-electricity generators. As a result Bulk-electricity generators are lobbying on scale to ensure existing legislation stays intact. This works to minimise the threat from community-based initiatives and to stifle the new technology.
Contact owns the Clyde dam, sited in the sparsely populated south of New Zealand. It is the largest concrete gravity dam in NZ and can generate 432 Megawatts. However a large aluminium smelter resides in the region. It consumes up to 20% of New Zealand’s total electricity production. As the debate intensifies over best uses of valuable energy forms like electricity, it is not in Contact Energy’s interests if this use of electricity is seriously questioned in any national debate about electricity use.
Hence it is possible to view Contact Energy’s huge national campaign as strategically timed. Also a number of factors indicate that Contact Energy’s fundamental intention is to confine any national debate about sustainable uses of energy to concepts that serve its electricity and gas interests as a bulk-electricity generator. A graphic indicator is its present unwillingness to countenance consumer owned net metering. (See Electric Inanity Meter Survey. Use Back button to return)
The campaign contains a wealth of important and sustainable information. However, the overall campaign is most unsustainable. This is evident in the choice of symbols, in the issues and options not mentioned and in the underlying assumption that continuing growth in demand bulk-generated electricity is necessary for sustainable development.
Example:
The symbols for energy, power, electricity and bulk-generated electricity are completely spliced together to form one symbol – contact positive energy. Terms like “national energy supply” “ secure power supply” and “new reliable electricity sources” “ secure reliable power supply” “our electricity supply”. Sometimes the terms are spliced together in consecutive sentences e.g. “Like all Western countries, our economy and way of life rely on the secure reliable supply of electricity. That is Contact’s focus – to achieve power supplies that balance costs to consumers ………
All these terms are redefined to mean one thing - “bulk-generated electricity”.
Example:
Central to a page on energy efficiency is the repeated illustration of a life ring such as is used to keep people afloat if a boat sinks. It is inscribed POWER SAVINGS. The life ring is a profound symbol of crisis, emergency, life-threatening situations. Under the dominant illustration is the headline
Energy efficiency: Less is more.
The by-line is “An obvious but over looked energy option we have, is simply to use less power. While New Zealand’s growing energy demand is the sign of a vibrant economy, the potential power supply gap caused by the rundown of Maui gas need not be so wide….”
This definition of energy efficiency is unhelpful because the implication is that energy efficiency involves less use of energy and more deprivation. The link is made between growing "energy demands" and a vibrant economy. The campaign repeatedly defines energy demand and power demand as bulk-generated electricity demand. Increased demand for grid-sourced electricity is not necessarily a sign of vibrant economy at all. Indeed it can be the sign of sick economy. The bulk of the population can be poorer for it if it means there is reduced demand for solar energy and for wind/wave/tidal power.
Example:
“..on-site biomass can lower the energy needs of the plant that produces it and reduce the pressure on the national grid.” As an aside, those unfamiliar with industry use of symbols may find it helpful to learn the plant referred to is an industrial plant, not biological plant. Contact Energy is here confusing “energy needs” with “grid sourced electricity”. The energy needs of the plant will be unchanged. It is simply they meet them from alternative sources. Again Contact Energy is defining electricity as energy.
Example:
Contact Energy say “we don’t call this a crisis – yet. New Zealand has plenty of energy options.” This statement wraps an illustration of the cartoon bird characters huddling dismally under a reading lamp for light, if not warmth. The same illustration features in its discussion of concepts of energy efficiency which is underlined by the statement “New Zealand has plenty of energy options of which energy efficiency is but one and they all come with their own set of costs and limitations.”
Example:
It has a section on lighting in which it advises readers to use energy efficient lighting (compact fluorescent light bulbs) wherever you can. It is headlined with an illustration of a life ring containing a picture of an incandescent light bulb.
Example:
If you do follow links to Contact Energy’s website it has an about energy link. This opens a page that says All About Energy Whether you'd like to know about the history of the energy industry in New Zealand or find out about the industry structure - you'll discover all you need to know here.
In brief, Contact Energy’s vision of energy is bulk-generated energy and gas. This is understandable as it owns large rights to the Maui gas field, owns three gas-fired turbines and is the largest gas wholesaler and retailer in New Zealand. It is also the largest bulk-electricity generator. However this is only a tiny fraction of the energy New Zealand uses and could use each day.
Example:
Contact Positive Energy’s interactive education module allows you to load a range of energy form uses to fill gap created by the demand for bulk-generated electricity outstripping the supply. Options such as distributed generation are not included.
If you attempt to plug the gap using energy efficiency option for between 30% -100% the website informs us that “Significant quantities of energy efficiency become increasingly expensive to undertake.” It does point out that by opting for 100% energy efficiency measures to breach the “energy gap” we would be overlooking cost effective opportunities wind and other renewables.
However even plugging the “gap” using 20% energy efficiency the website warns, “While cost effective it may be hard to achieve these levels of energy efficiency.”
It is easy for the reader to develop an image that energy efficiency practice becomes more expensive to implement. This is not necessarily so at all. The construction of a railway alongside a crowded road can lead to marked efficiencies in the transport of freight. Huge efficiencies can then be gained at little extra cost by using it for the transport of people. Once a building is sited to the sun, insulation can allow considerable efficiencies. Once insulated a whole raft of technologies become economic.
Example:
Positive Energy For: - Positive Energy - NZ Positive Energy - New Zealand Energy Policy - NZ Power Policy
Contact Energy is rebranding itself in this campaign as Contact Positive Energy. The concept of ‘positive energy’ is a very sophisticated idea and is integral to and is part of a very broad and exhilarating vision of the nature of energy. For Contact Energy to take such a potentially valuable concept and redefine it as a bulk-generated electricity is unhelpful. Besides destroying very beautiful concepts, it is actively creating learning blocks for our children. It is destroying “energy options”.
There is no indication that Contact Energy has any real idea of what positive energy is. If they did, then their literature might include extracts such as the following one from www.physics.hku.hk :
"Double Negative
Before proceeding further, we should draw the reader's attention to what negative energy is not. It should not be confused with antimatter, which has positive energy. When an electron and its antiparticle, a positron, collide, they annihilate. The end products are gamma rays, which carry positive energy. If antiparticles were composed of negative energy, such an interaction would result in a final energy of zero. One should also not confuse negative energy with the energy associated with the cosmological constant, postulated in inflationary models of the universe [see "Cosmological Antigravity, by Lawrence M. Krauss; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, January 1999]. Such a constant represents negative pressure but positive energy. (Some authors call this exotic matter; we reserve the term for negative energy densities.)
Chapter Seven - The House of Life-The Great Positive Energy Implosion.
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