Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Malcolm Johns: Genesis CEO on the coal restock at Huntly Power Station to avoid a generation shortfall

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Malcolm Johns: Genesis CEO on the coal restock at Huntly Power Station to avoid a generation shortfall · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Now, after the last year's energy shortfall, Genesis has beefed
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: up as stockpile at the Huntley power station. It already
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: has five hundred thousand tons of coal. There's another five
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand on the way. That's a million tons of coal.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: All of this just in case rain doesn't top up
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: our hydro lakes in time. So I'm joined now by
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the Genesis chief executive, Malcolm John's. Hello, Malcolm, good morning,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: How are you good. That's an awful lot of coal.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Where do you keep it?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: We pop it just out behind the power station at Huntley.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: It's a big mountain of stuff.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: It's a big mountain of coal.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly where do you get it from?
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: How we bring it in from Indonesia?
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Why can't you use New Zealand coal?
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Well, when Huntley power Station was built, it was built
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: for a very specific chemical compound of coal which was
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: found in the mines behind Huntley. Those mines are now
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: predominantly exhausted. So we can buy some New Zealand coal.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: But to put that into perspective, we buy New Zealand
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: can supply about about ten or twenty thousand tons a year,
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: which is well short of a million tons that we need.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: So Indonesia is the only other country that has mines
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: with the same chemical compound of coal that Huntley needs
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: at the moment.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Would you describe the coal as high grade?
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Yes, it is. It's less about the grade of it,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: more about the way that coal is used is you
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: crush it into a talcum powder and it gets injected
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: into the furnaces, and the furnaces are designed for a
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: certain chemical compound of coal. When you start to move
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: away from that chemical compound, the furnace has become less
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: efficient and you get less energy or less electricity out
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: of every ton of coal.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: So a million times of Indonesian coal. How concerned are
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: you about a possible energy shortfall again this year.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Well, we're doing what we can in terms of ensuring
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: that Huntley is able to contribute to the system. Huntley
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: is New Zealand's largest electricity generation site and we have
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: three two hundred and forty megawatt rankin units at Huntley
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: that produce the electricity and those units can consume up
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: to nine thousand tons of coal a day when they're
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: running at full capacity. We had to run them at
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: full capacity last winter, and we worked our way through
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: about eight hundred thousand tons of coal. So a million
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: tons of coal is about appropriate for what we believe
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: we can genuinely put through the machines.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: This shows you that we just do not have enough electricity,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: doesn't it. I mean, what else could we do to
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: actually secure our supply without having to burn the coal.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Well, I think the first thing we've got to remember
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: is New Zealand is roughly eighty five percent renewable electricity.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Now that's in the top five countries in the world.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: And the reality of that is that we rely on
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: a hydro scheme and wind as big parts of those
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: and unfortunately, sometimes it doesn't rain and it doesn't blow.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: And unfortunately on top of that is that when it
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: doesn't rain, it also doesn't blow, and so there's a
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: correlation between rain droughts and wind droughts. Last winter we
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: had both a rain and a wind rout and there
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: just simply wasn't enough gas left in New Zealand to
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: back the system up.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Was Lake Onslow a missed opportunity.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Look, I think there's lots of people with different views
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: on how you solve this issue. I just think it's
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: important to remember that at eighty five percent renewable. You're
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: talking about roughly one or two years every five year
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: cycle that you need to you rely on thermal generation
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: to genuinely back up the system. New Zealand by twenty
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: thirty five will probably be around ninety five percent renew
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: all generation. That'll be one of the best in the world.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: But we're probably likely to never get to one hundred
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: percent renewable generation. Genuinely. We will need some form of
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: thermal in the system to keep the lights on when
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: the rain doesn't come and the wind doesn't blow.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: All right, thank you so much for your time, mates,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: and that is Malcolm John's who is the CEO of
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Genesis a Million Tons, coming to keep our power on.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: For more from earlier edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live
• 4:27
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• 4:30
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