Former Labour energy minister slams Labour/Green power policy

Stuff reports:

A former Labour energy minister has slammed the party’s proposed power policy, saying it would mostly benefit the rich while damaging the renewable energy sector.

David Butcher, who now runs a consulting firm, was one of four speakers debating the merits of NZ Power at the Downstream energy forum in Auckland. …

Butcher said the proposal would overturn 25 years of collaborative market development for an “untested and very flawed model”.

“I think it would largely destroy the renewables industry, or at least set it back five or six years,” he said.

Butcher said that before deregulation in 1990, power prices were rising by about 20 per cent a year.

Today, 72 per cent of new generation was renewable, there was private investment in renewables and there were no blackouts, he said.

Butcher said the benefits of the policy would largely go to rich people with high power usage and companies like Rio Tinto, which runs the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter.

Of their many bad policies, I rate this one the worse.