Fallout from country’s oil ban offers dire warning for a Labour-run Britain
www.telegraph.co.uk
The party “will not be issuing licences to explore new [oil and gas] fields as we accelerate to clean power”, a Labour spokesman confirmed on Tuesday.
It follows last weekend’s announcement that New Zealand’s government was lifting a ban on new oil and gas exploration.
The ban was announced by former prime minister Jacinda Ardern in 2018. “The world has moved on from fossil fuels,” Ardern proclaimed at the time.
New Zealand’s trailblazing policy, which was the first of its kind, became a key inspiration for the Labour Party’s own plan.
However, some in the party are now questioning the commitment after New Zealand resources minister Shane Jones last weekend denounced
its own ban as a disaster – and revoked it.
It followed three years of rising energy prices that have left 110,000 households unable to warm their homes, 19pc of households struggling with bills and 40,000 of them having their power cut off due to unpaid bills, according to Consumer NZ.
Since April the situation has further deteriorated: Transpower, the equivalent of our National Grid, warned that the nation was at high risk of blackouts.
New Zealand’s shift to renewables meant it no longer had the generating power to keep the lights on during the cold spells that mark the Antipodean winter, said Transpower, as it begged consumers to cut their electricity consumption.