NZ$7.05 million would get them a good start on an infrastructure for Battery Electric Cars.

Instead they invest in reasons to cut down New Zealand's forests, and even more ways to pollute.

Anyone living in New Zealand should bitterly complain about their Government, and to their government.

England, NZ's ancestor, burned up much of its forests to start the industrial revolution. It is an easy calculation to find out how much forest is required to generate enough biomass to make enough fuel to supply the liquid fuel needs of NZ. Ordinary trees and plants are usually less than two percent efficient at converting sunlight into biomass.

Lumps of some kinds of coal can easily be seen to have annual growth layers and this would allow a calculation of the maximum productivity of plants in ancient times as well.

Presently the maximum solar input is about 1 kilowatt per square meter. This would also give an absolute maximum of energy that a square meter of land could collect by any means when integrated with the change of intensity during the day and the time. The fact that plants use a limited part of the light's wavelength lowers the efficiency of collection. Water is absolutely necessary for plant growth and is the main limitation.

Algae is said to be able to produce large amounts of oils to turn into biodiesel, but the solar input also limits how much can be made. The efficiency of use is not very high.

A large number of small solar parabolic reflector stirling engine generators are probably the cheapest and most efficient way of producing electricity from the sun. When produced in large numbers the cost can be quite low. Hydrogen can be generated by electrolysis and fed to bacteria with CO2 to produce liquid fuels. The bacteria chosen might best produce n-butanol which is compatible to many modern and ancient gasoline engines.

Calculations will show that there cannot be enough biomass grown by ordinary plants to support a modern civilization with the area available for the population. Many countries do not have even enough area for food.

Industrial factories that can make digestible food from many forms of cellulostic biomass might be a better use of such biomass, but now much of this production is left to goats, cows and mushrooms. Quorn might well be produced from hydrolysed trees, grass and cornstalks.

The fission of uranium and thorium can be done completely in accelerator driven reactors or breeder reactors. The cost of the uranium for such reactors is not a significant part of the cost of the electricity produced. A pound of uranium can be converted to the same amount of heat as 3,000,000 pounds of coal or about $30,000 dollars worth on todays market.

Nuclear, or any other kind of electricity, is first used to charge the batteries of plug-in-hybrid cars. Lead acid batteries have long been in commercial production that allow for their cheap use for plug in hybrid cars, but ZEBRA batteries have three times the energy per weight and higher efficiency and less maintenance and longer life, and can be used when the life cycle costs are appropriate due to mass production. Lithium batteries are not needed but can be used when the price is right for the purpose.

Small high-power but low energy cheap glass fiber flywheels should be used in cars for the temporary storage of energy for stops and starts. Energy is fed to and from the lead batteries at a much lower rate as needed.

Even old cars can be fitted with new larger alternators and batteries that are charged from the grid to supply power to the cars electrical system for fairly long trips, so that petrolium is not used for that purpose. The large alternator is used to do some charging with regenerative braking and to charge low batteries on long trips.

Hydrogen produced from nuclear fuels can be combined with CO2 for feed to bacteria to produce Butanol. The CO2 may have to be reacted with hydrogen to produce CO first. Then CO and H2 can be formed into methanol for modern cars or to store for later use. The methanol can be converted to dimethylether, DME for use as a propane replacement or a diesel replacement.

Vacuum glass enclosed solar collectors for heating water for houses for is probably the first and most economic solar energy use that the NZ government should require. The soil or large water tanks could store large amounts of heat for later use. ..HG..

Could someone explain why It is possible to produce Hydrogen from nuclear, but not renewables?
Something to do with "waste" heat, "dummy load utilization"? Centralised facility?
Why wouldn't these same conditions apply to renewables maybe even more so (except the waste heat).
A large installed fraction of renewables would have plenty of excess capacity to cover peaks and troughs. These plant will be connected by the grid, which should need to be upgraded and the Hydrogen and fuels processing plants can then be seen at grid nodes.
The same fuels plant could run down its reserves as grid load following.
This way the ability to match output to demand leaves a byproduct of hydrocarbon fuel processing from these "renewable" (forest, industry other) byproducts