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Straight after Dame Jacinda Ardern became PM in November 2017, Barbara Chapman became deputy chair of the NZ Initiative, second only to Roger Partridge ( the Chair and co-founder ) of this Atlas Network think tank.

NZME had named Barbara Chapman as the NZ Herald's business leader of the year in 2017 and six months after she was ensconced with Atlas - she also became the Chair of NZME in May 2018.

That was a remarkable circle of fortune but even more interesting was that in the very same month - Barbara Chapman also became Chair of Genesis Energy, who own the Huntly Power Station - which as you know - at that time was run on 60% Gas and 40% Coal.

It's interesting to note that Dame Jacinda Ardern announced the ban on offshore exploration for oil and gas in April 2018 and boom - there was Barbara taking up that spot at the top of Genesis just four weeks later.

So here was Barbara seated at the top of Atlas in New Zealand with a top down view of media assets at NZME ( NZ Herald, NewsTalk ZB ) - and energy assets at Genesis.

The eyes and ears of Atlas.

Three months before Barbara Chapman had taken up the reigns at the top of Genesis - the CEO had boldly stated it would take 12 years to stop using coal by 2030 - something that enraged GreenPeace at the time.

"If Genesis is still burning coal at Huntly by 2029, that would mean holding our country back from the clean energy future we deserve." - said Greenpeace

New Zealand had the technology and resources to do without coal, gas, or any other dirty fossil fuels, but leadership from industry and government was lacking, stated Greenpeace back in 2018.

Scroll forward three years to May 2021 and Stuff reported that ...

"Enerlytica analyst John Kidd​ estimates Genesis has been burning about 250,000 tonnes of coal at Huntly each month since it took a third, coal-fired turbine out of storage in February and stepped up fossil-fuelled generation in response to relatively low hydro production and gas shortages."

As you know coal generates about 30 times more carbon emissions than oil and the amount Barabara Chapman's Huntly Power station was sending up into the air was enough to swallow all the gains made by James Shaw's initial moves to replace coal boilers at schools etc - in only five days.

Long story short Genesis had been talking about renewables for the previous years - and had even started getting wind farms on the go - but the use of renewables had declined and 2020/21 were dry hydrological years - meaning Genesis had shipped in Indonesian Coal and loaded it onto trains and trucks at Tauranga, while NewsTalk ZB ( one of Barbara's media assets ) had lashed out at Jacinda - citing her comments about Climate Change being this generation's nuclear moment.

After a report into all this business - Labour's Megan Wood proposed the battery project ( Lake Onslow ) to deal with storing enough energy to cope with dry years.

More recently in fairness to Barbara Chapman - Genesis finally got around to signing an agreement with Fonterra to work together on exploring the viability of biomass as a substitute for coal including the potential for a local supply chain - but only in February 2023. ( OMG ).

Anyway - here's the rub - Barbara Chapman ( Deputy Chair of the NZ Initiative - Atlas ) is right there while beside her - her Chair Roger Partridge gets his articles platformed in the NZ Herald about how there is no point in reducing emissions because of the ETS cap on net emissions ( not gross emissions ) - and how if say one area reduces emissions that just means somebody else will increase theirs...the actual argument goes like this :

"Our ETS is one of the world’s most comprehensive. It places a fixed – and reducing – cap on net emissions. Fossil fuels for domestic transport must be offset under the scheme using carbon credits. As people switch from using petrol/diesel cars to EVs, gross emissions from the transport sector decrease. But this simply frees up carbon credits, facilitating emissions in other sectors of the economy. The EV subsidies simply re-arrange the deck chairs. The ETS cap determines overall net emissions." - Roger Partridge 5 May 2023.

You might recall that Chris Bishop and Simeon Brown and mates rallied around Groundswell and raged against the Clean Car Discount ( The Ute tax ), fresh water regulations and environmental regulations - which they saw as red tape - and much of these activities were also supported by the Taxpayers Union, the other Atlas Network think tank operating in NZ.

Anyway Chris Bishop appeared on Q&A on 2 April 2023 - where Jack Tame put the sword to him over his griping about the RMA and how it was a major barrier to getting renewable energy consents done quickly.

"The current planning system puts barrier after barrier in the way. A new wind farm can take ten years to complete – eight years to obtain resource consent, and two years to build. Labour’s proposed RMA 2.0 laws will only make this worse." - stated Chris Bishop on behalf of the National Party.

Atlas Network ideology is opposed to central planning in all it's forms - and I dug into the depths of National's policy here mindful of how Bishop was claiming it takes eight years to consent a wind farm - while Jack Tame named eight wind farms that had already been consented - which were all just sitting there on the plans - approaching a time when these consents would lapse...dumpty do.

In summary - I discovered that all eight wind farms that are sitting around on the plans with consent - had been consented in between 7 months to 2 years - when I measured the time from the application being lodged to the date consent was granted. ( As you do on Sundays lol )

Notably there were cases where someone like Genesis might appeal an RMA consent decision to the Environment Court - but that was not the RMA being too slow.

I also identified that National's full policy could not name any examples of wind farms that took 8 years to consent - but instead pointed at a few hydro projects way back in the early 2000s. Wow - the "electrify New Zealand" and "Let's double renewables" was not being held up by the RMA - instead there was something else in the way - like a stalled level of demand for electricity.

Thankfully Jack Tame pointed out to Bishop on Q&A that it was ridiculous to make the premise that it takes too long to consent a wind farm when on the other hand - eight consented wind farms were just sitting around on the plans gathering dust because - market conditions were not right.

Nevertheless Bishop moaned how the big retailers like Genesis and Contact etc were upset about the RMA and how the RMA 2.0 that David Parker had put together ( which included fast track consenting ) would make things worse.

It's worth pointing out here that Bishop is connected to the Atlas Network via his father John Bishop who helped co-found the Taxpayers Union ...way back in 2013.

Here Bishop and National were selling a smoke and mirrors solution to something that was not really a very big problem - and that message was being amplified via Newstalk ZB and the NZ Herald.

I went through all the submissions about the RMA 2.0 and found 94% of them agreed some reform to the old 1991 Act was needed - but it was the case that the energy sector wanted something more like a Development Act - and the people who care about the life on the planet wanted more of an Environmental Act - and Parker had struck the middle ground.

It wasn't until after the election that NewsHub Nation finally got around to interviewing Dr Kayla Kingdon-bebb who stated how she was astonished how little Climate was debated in the lead up to the 2023 election.

Kayla pointed out that in a year we had Cyclone Gabrielle - everyone was more focused on short term needs ( like paying for food and those power bills ) than scrutinising these matters and she blasted National for having nothing substantial behind it's climate policies. Yes. Slogans and commitments - but no real plan, no how to do it, just a vacant windswept Chris Bishop talking vaguely about an alternative RMA in three years time and getting rid of all that work David Parker had done to strike the balance.

Kayla ( who I like ) also pointed out Nicola Willis and Bishop ( both connected to Atlas ) had wrongly used the term "ETS Climate Dividend" - when what the Nats were doing was simply robbing the Climate work programme to give it all to tax cuts.

The facts were emissions had been coming down under Labour and the emissions GIDI projects were incentivising industry to bring down the use of coal - and even the coal industry was saying - well it's those pesky GIDI projects that are making us go out of business. That plus the fact 2022 was not a dry year and coal consumption fell away - while Luxon kept up the rhetoric about importing Indonesian Coal and how Gas was a transition fuel.

It should be noted Winston was grumbling how we should be using New Zealand coal lol but not much about the leadership inside the likes of Genesis who were taking years to introduce renewables to replace their fossil fuels use at Huntly.

It was all about market forces - not climate science - and don't forget all that money invested by transnational investors ( as well as mum and dad ) in the pipes that distribute the gas and the coal mining operations - and how these assets and long term contracts keep us pumping carbon into the atmosphere so the investors feel confident and secure.

Ever wonder why it takes so long to get things done when it comes to a "just transition" to renewable energy?

It's got far less to do with the RMA than National and Atlas would have us all believe, as National boast they have ripped all Labour's reform work apart in their first 100 days.

The Atlas Network have sided with slowing down the change and you can bet your bottom dollar Luxon is getting the "slow down" done - as he makes it much more expensive to own and run an EV, rips up the Department of Conservation, tears apart the RMA 2.0 , cancels Lake Onslow ( battery project ), and talks to his economic advisor Matt Burgess - who is of course - you guessed it - formerly an NZ Initiative employee, who advised Bill English.

Next the NZ Herald will be giving Luxon a standing ovation for "getting things done" in his first 100 days...and somewhere up in the Atlas Network clouds, Barbara Chapman and Roger Partridge will be celebrating.

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