Environmental, social and governance (ESG)
of the most critical pieces of this country’s infrastructure for meeting our decarbonisation goals, it needs to be considered as a whole system, not in the silos prescribed by the original market settings of the late 1990s. Better energy and regulatory policy alignment across government is becoming increasingly urgent, and we note steps that the United Kingdom has taken in establishing the Department of Energy Security & Net Zero. Establishing an equivalent aligned policy agency would be effective in ensuring strategy development, regulation, policy, market design and oversight, and resilience are all centrally coordinated with the necessary expertise and resources. Following our emissions reduction plan We’ve committed to measuring and managing our own carbon emissions to help with New Zealand’s transition to a low-carbon economy. This includes reducing emissions to meet our science-aligned reduction target of 53.5% by 2030 based on a 2020 baseline, as well as having net -zero carbon operational emissions (scope 1 and 2 excluding electricity distribution losses) by 2030. At 30 June 2023, we have achieved a 14.5% reduction towards our science- aligned target. Emissions reduction activity this year has included the continuation of two key initiatives from the prior year to realise further reductions in our footprint. We’ve ramped up the use of transformers deployed temporarily to keep the power on during maintenance projects instead of fossil fuel generators, avoiding an estimated 1,388 tCO 2 e (scope 1 and 3 combined) over FY23, and we’re continuing our increased schedule of gas leak surveying on the gas network. Other initiatives this year have included reducing response time for gas leaks, and flaring them instead of venting, and a public awareness campaign designed to reduce third-party damages to our gas pipelines. As a result of these activities, we are maintaining a downward trajectory on these emissions.
CLIMATE CHANGE RESILIENCE FOR OUR ELECTRICITY NETWORK
The Auckland Anniversary Weekend flooding, together with Cyclone Gabrielle, set a new bar for extreme weather in Auckland, with Cyclone Gabrielle more devastating than Cyclone Bola in 1988. The scale of these events has prompted calls for better resilience across our country’s infrastructure. Improving electricity network resilience is a complex task, and extends far beyond simply stopping the impacts of extreme weather taking out the power for our customers. Vector’s thinking on resilience follows the International Energy Agency’s framework, which breaks down physical resilience into three stages following a disruption to normal supply:
Climate Resilience
Performance
Immediate impacts of extreme weather events
Recovery back to equilibrium
Equilibrium Long-term impacts of climate change
Outbreak of a disruption
Robustness Withstand gradual changes in climate
Resourcefulness Manage operation during a disruption
Recovery Restore system’s function
Time
To provide better customer outcomes, our resilience strategies focus on: – preventing and withstanding damage – responding to the immediate impact from severe weather on disruptions to supply – recovering back to equilibrium once the storm has passed. The second two of these stages often involve the accuracy and availability of data, and the capability to use that data for insights to streamline operational processes, including those in the field. We will continue to refine our climate change modelling capability, while also maintaining ongoing investment in multi-year, dedicated network hardening programmes, and specific resilience measures which consider options such as asset relocation, network reinforcement, micro-grids, increased low voltage visibility, and vegetation management. This year we’ve expanded our list of community emergency generation hubs, with a new, permanent generation injection point established in Warkworth, joining previously established points in Piha and Waiheke Island. These hubs speed up the provision of emergency generation to support communities whose electricity supply has been impacted by severe weather.
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