Mike Hayward: MBIE Market Manager on the predicted increase of power usage in New Zealand

New MBIE data reveals New Zealanders will be using 80% more power than we do now by 2050. 

It shows demand is expected to grow as fossil fuel use switches to electricity, electric vehicles increase, and new demand, such as data centres, come online. 

MBIE market manager Mike Hayward told Mike Hosking he's confident we can rely more on electricity from renewable sources. 

He says the last quarter showed a 51% increase in generation from solar. 

LISTEN ABOVE 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
About these NB figures around the future of our use
of power. So by twenty fifty, here's the claim. By
twenty fifty, we're going to use eighty percent more than
we currently do. So how's this going to happen? The
Market Manager Evidence and Insights at MB Mike Haywood, is
with us on this Mike morning.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Good morning, Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
How concrete are the numbers? How confident do you feel
about them?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
They represent a range of scenarios the MBS investigator in
terms of our abilities to meet future electricity demand and
the generation build that we need in order to meet
that demand.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
See twenty five years out. If you go back twenty
five years, say to the beginning of two thousand, we
hadn't heard of AI and we didn't know that AI
generated or needed the sort of generation of power. So
who's to say what happens in the next twenty five years?

Speaker 2 (00:47):
And that is the important part about having a range
of scenarios that look at a range of different future
future positions for the New Zealand's electricity see and to
investigate those and map out what we could possibly see
in terms of future demand for electricity.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
So we're talking about a range here say, data centers.
How many data centers are going to be here and
does data center power use change in the next couple
of decades do we know or not know?

Speaker 2 (01:20):
So we've certainly had a lot of signals from the
market that there is an interest in building data centers
and in growth in data centers in New Zealand. That
has an impact on our generation required or to meet
that new demand, and it is one of the main
main drivers that we expect in terms of new demand

(01:40):
in New Zealand, along with the expected demand from increased
electric vehicles and the electrification of industrial and commercial processes.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
When you talk about electric vehicles, what percentage of the
fleet do you think in twenty five years is going
to be eved?

Speaker 2 (01:57):
So we do expect that the EV flo in twenty
five years will be between sixty and eighty percent, with
a perhaps batle mid point about seventy percent. But as
I say, there are a range of scenarios. We don't
expect complete electrication of the vehicle fleet. There's still a
need for existing internal combustion methods. But we do see

(02:21):
a substantial change, particularly from the late twenty thirties onwards.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
And how much variability have you placed into your modeling
of any given government on any given day doing something random,
wandering into Taranaki and saying we're not going to explore
oil and gas any more. Thanks for coming.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Obviously, there are decisions that any government can make that
we have taken the best available information that we have
in terms of existing government positions and in particular industry
signals about where the ultricity sector is going. But obviously

(02:58):
there is any decision that can be made by government.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
How confident are you on our ability to scale up
because you bullish on wind apart from anything else, How
can we do it?

Speaker 2 (03:09):
I think we're already shown that we can do it.
There's been substantial increases in solar and wind generation in
New Zealand. If I look to the last quarter, the
March quarter, we had a fifty one percent increase in
generation from solar versus the same quarter a year ago,

(03:32):
and a forty three percent increase in wind versus a
year ago. So we're already showing that the generation is
coming online.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
All right, nice to talk to you, Mike. I appreciate it,
and I'll get you back in twenty five years and
see if you're right. Mike, Heyward, the NBA market Manager,
Evidence and Insight.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
For more from the mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to
news talks. It'd be from six am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio