“The news that Rio Tinto is set to wind down the Tiwai Point Aluminium Smelter means change for New Zealand's electricity sector.
“The smelter makes up 13 percent of the country's electricity consumption, so when its contract with Meridian Energy is up in August 2021, the impact will be widely felt.”

Basically, in a year’s time, New Zealand will suddenly have a massive amount of electricity sitting there, twiddling its thumbs.

Tiwai Point’s electricity essentially comes from the Lake Manapouri Hydroelectric Station, which was built especially for it back in the late 60s.

This is gorgeous Lake Manapouri, by the way:

What’s interesting is that protests against the building of this hydroelectric station were one of the things that kicked off New Zealand’s environmental movement!

Of course, now that it’s there, it’s a “renewable energy asset”, which environmentalists love.

Ironic.

The question is going to become: What to do with this surplus energy?

An obvious solution would be to use it to build electric cars and/or batteries. Or power electric cars imported from overseas. Or build wind turbines or solar panels.

Pretty much: Use it to build a renewable future.

Instead, the Minister of Finance came out and suggested constructing Data Centres to run on the excess electricity.

That’s forward thinking for you.

Hopefully the thinking will get a bit more forward than that over the next twelve months. The greenies should be all over this one.