An IEM Approach for Small Scale Wind Generated Electricity

Recently I was involved in a group project to investigate how an IEM approach might be used to develop small scale wind generated electricity in New Zealand. The project was given as a brief and contained some comments that had been published in a Press article regarding Christchurch City Councils discouraging District Plan rules. Some of the comments made in the article by a wind turbine company owner were:

"This is the type of thing that the council should be encouraging ... it's a natural resource, and a good way to save money on power."

"Every other council in New Zealand is proactive on this, but not Christchurch,"

"the resource consent requirement is cost-prohibitive"

Our group set about to investigate these claims as well as deliver on the following specified tasks:

· A review of the potential for small scale wind generated electricity to contribute to sustainable outcomes
· A review of environmental, health and other issues associated with small scale wind generated electricity
· A review of the policy and institutional arrangements around management of small scale wind energy projects
· Develop an IEM approach to the future management of small scale wind energy projects within the urban and peri-urban environments with the focus on the Christchurch and Selwyn areas.

Following the IEM process flow diagram we commenced problem definition. This involved a number of methods to further define and understand the problem. We undertook extensive literature reviews of books, journal articles, dissertations, theses and internet sources largely from Government sponsored websites. In addition, we contacted a wide range of subject matter experts including engineers, turbine manufacturers, scientists, environmental group representatives, business owners and users to gain an understanding of the technical nature of wind generated technology, but also of the differing perpectives available.

In order to set goals and to know where we wanted to be, we took the time to define sustainable outcomes. This was an important aspect of our process and one that can too easily be taken for granted. It was noted that in a large number of government policy documents, sustainability is often poorly defined and follows the very cliche format adopted by the Burndtland report.

In pursuit of clear goal definition we adopted The Natural Step approach and devised the following definition:

A sustainable electricity sector is one that:

1. Eliminates our contribution to the progressive build-up of substances extracted
from the Earth's crust and involves:
· an electricity system dominated by renewable or low emissions sources
where alternative clean energy source play key roles, lowering New Zealand’s
carbon footprint.
· distributed generation and technology advances enable consumers to
manage their energy costs and support energy security.

2. Eliminates our contribution to the progressive build-up of chemicals and
compounds produced by society and involves:
· all materials used in the production and maintenance of electricity generating
technology can either be reused, recycled or returned to its natural state.
· no harmful substances or chemicals used in the production of or maintenance
of electricity generating technology.

3. Eliminates our contribution to the progressive physical degradation and
destruction of nature and natural processes and involves:
· avoiding, remedying, or mitigating any adverse effects of activities on the environment

4. Eliminates our contribution to conditions that undermine people’s capacity to
meet their basic human needs and involves:
· a robust, reliable and efficiently run electricity grid meets their electricity
needs
· All New Zealanders have uninhibited access to clean sources of energy and
distributed generation technologies that are commonly affordable.

In order to identify the pressure points we needed to conduct an analysis of the status quo. In doing so we reviewed the potential for small scale wind turbines to contribute to the sustainable outcomes as identified, the environmental effects of small scale wind turnbines as well as the legislative framework around the management.

Potential for small scale wind turbines to contribute to sustainable outcomes:

Determined by a range of factors some of which enhance, whilst others inhibit.
Optimal use of New Zealand’s abundant wind resource must be employed through clever siting and flexible regulation regarding configuration.

Legislation and policy should be drafted in a way that enables small scale wind turbine technology to flourish.

Comparatively high cost of small scale wind turbines and government imposed transaction costs inhibits potential.

There are currently no government imposed economic incentives to stimulate or
encourage the use of small scale wind technology either.

Environmental, Health and other Effects

There are a wide variety of issues associated with small scale wind energy generation including:

Environmental (ecological, visual, emissons, electromagnetic inteference)

Health (noise, vibration, human safety)

Social (public acceptance, attitude, energy security)

Due to the variance reported in the severity of these impacts it is difficult to determine conclusively which are significant and many of the effects of large scale wind projects have not been tested at a small scale level.

Policy and Insitutional Arrangements

The the policy and institutional arrangements relating to small scale wind energy were found to be fragmented and lacking strong direction.

Central and local government policies have all indicated renewable energy is desirable but there is still a lack of recognition the district plans.

A National Policy Statement for Renewable Energy Generation has been prepared but not approved which may be the result of current economic conditions and changing government interests.

Options

From here we now progressed on to the next stage in the IEM process to draft four options that could potentially address the environmental and administrative/management issues described above.

These options were:

1. Do nothing - remain with the status quo.

2. A 'top down' central government led approach involving a strong NPS.

3. A 'bottom up' approach involving an advisory group.

4. An enabling approach use as many incentives and enabling mechanisms as thought reasonable to facilitate the instigation of small scale wind turbines.

The options were each evaluated against a set of criteria developed in a similar way to the criteria developed in an earlier post of this blog. As mentioned previously, a criteria is not an exhaustive list of IEM attributes but as a useful tool to assess how integrated an approach is. The criteria we used for this project was:

1. Clear problem and goal definition.
2. A coordinated and enabling legislative framework.
3. Inclusion of a variety of stakeholders and forms of information.
4. Interagency coordination and appropriate leadership.
5. Modes of conflict resolution.
6. Monitoring, evaluation and adjustment.
7. Future Focused and Strategic.

To facilitate the evaluation process we used a matrix to assess the options against the criteria. Each option was rated using a five star scale - five being excellent and strongly meets the criteria, one star being poor and fails to meet the criteria. The resulting table was as follows:

As the table shows, the status quo was vastly inferior and no alternate option came out on top. However, through this process we were able to identify which elements contributed most to greater integration. We decided to propose a recommended course of action that eliminated the weakness and drew on the strenghts of the draft options.

The final recommended option involved a number of mechanisms including a national policy statement and a New Zealand Standard taken from Option 2. Problem definition was addressed through an inclusive process which was intended to inform a coordinated national policy framework. The establishment of an advisory group was retained from Option 3 in order to take into account local views and appropriately informing local government and their district plans. To encourage the enhanced use of small scale wind turbines economic
incentives, inspired by Option 4.

Through the rigourous and comprehensive process provided by the IEM literature, we were able to draft an approach that has greater potential to increase the proportion of electricity generated by renewable sources and make optimal use of New Zealand’s wind resource through distributed generation of electricity. Although there are a number of areas where we might have improved our outcomes, I believe, had we not used the IEM framework, we would have struggled to scratch the surface of this intricate and complex problem and we would have developed an inappropriate and far inferior responce to the one we were able to draft in this project. A practical and valuable learning experience, that could really only be enhanced by an opportunity to actually implement a plan.