New Zealand needs much more renewable electricity. Electrifying transport and industrial heat, accommodating growth and achieving net zero emissions of long-lived gases by 2050 will require a substantial increase in generation.
Solar power must be part of that transition. It’s increasingly cost-effective, can be deployed relatively quickly and complements our hydro-dominated electricity system. The Environmental Defence Society strongly supports its expansion.
But renewable energy is not environmentally benign simply because it is renewable. Solar farms, like all major infrastructure, need to be located and designed with care. The emerging proliferation of large-scale proposals in Te Manahuna/the Mackenzie Country and the use of the fast-track process to approve them suggests that lesson is being forgotten.
The attraction to developers is obvious. The Mackenzie basin has high solar irradiance together with large expanses of open land. Existing hydroelectricity and transmission infrastructure offers opportunities for connecting generation to the national grid (though that capacity has its limits).
But describing this country as empty, barren or unused fundamentally misunderstands the place.
The Mackenzie Country is New Zealand’s largest intermontane basin and one of our most distinctive landscapes. Its vast open spaces, glacial landforms, high altitude, braided rivers, mountains and extraordinary light combine to create a landscape of national and international significance. The Environment Court has confirmed that much of the basin is an outstanding natural landscape following litigation by EDS.
It is also an ecological treasure. What can look like sparse vegetation contains highly specialised dry-land ecosystems, including indigenous grasslands, cushion fields and shrub lands. The basin supports threatened plants, endemic invertebrates and lizards, as well as birds including kakī (black stilt), black-fronted tern, wrybill, banded dotterel and black-billed gull.
Many of these habitats are already severely depleted and fragmented. That makes the remaining intact areas more important, not less.
EDS has been engaged in advocating for the protection of the Mackenzie Country for many years. We opposed large-scale dairy conversions, including at Simons Pass Station, because it was not right in that landscape.
The same concerns arise with solar development. The technology is different, but many of the effects are similar: displacement of indigenous vegetation, fragmentation of habitats, disruption of bird movements, new roads and fencing, and the transformation of an open natural landscape into more of an industrial one.
The recently approved Haldon solar farm illustrates the scale of change. It will occupy approximately 320 hectares and involve around 360,000 panels within an outstanding natural landscape. The site has important indigenous biodiversity values and potentially provides habitat for numerous taonga bird species mentioned above. EDS and Forest & Bird have recently filed High Court appeals against that decision under the Fast-track Approvals Act.
Haldon is not an isolated proposal. Kāi Tahu has identified nine large-scale solar developments proposed across Te Manahuna, with a combined footprint exceeding 6000 hectares. Landscape evidence prepared for another proposal concluded that five solar farms could collectively have moderate-high to high adverse cumulative effects on the basin’s landscape character and outstanding natural landscape values.
Yet these developments are being processed one by one, mostly under the fast-track. That legislation is designed to accelerate projects considered to have significant regional or national benefits. Participation is restricted, timeframes are compressed and environmental harm can be accepted unless it is assessed as being out of proportion to a project’s benefits.
A fast-track panel can determine the application in front of it, but it cannot undertake the broader spatial planning needed to decide how much solar infrastructure the basin can absorb, which areas must remain untouched and where development should be concentrated. By the time cumulative limits become apparent, the most obvious development opportunities are already taken and the wider landscape irrevocably changed.
The answer is not a moratorium on solar power. It is developing an urgent, strategic approach led by central and local government and developed with mana whenua and the community. Large-scale solar should be directed towards already highly modified land, locations near existing infrastructure and places where ecological and landscape effects can genuinely be avoided. Outstanding natural landscapes, significant indigenous vegetation and habitats of threatened species should generally be exclusion areas – not places where damage can routinely be offset or compensated elsewhere.
Applications must also be supported by rigorous ecological investigation. Dryland ecosystems are easily overlooked, and bird surveys must account for seasonal movements and habitat use. Cumulative assessments should include all consented, proposed and reasonably foreseeable projects, whether they are proceeding under the Resource Management Act or fast-track legislation.
We should move quickly on renewable energy. But speed is no substitute for judgment, and fast-tracking is no substitute for careful planning. Poorly located projects create conflict and risk sacrificing nature in the name of saving the climate. We can do better than that.
