The
Green Party says the Government's proposed partial sale of Meridian
Energy may be behind its abandonment of a controversial $2 billion
Central Otago wind farm plan.
Meridian Energy said on Thursday it
was giving up the six-year battle to seek a resource consent for Project
Hayes, a 176-turbine, 633 megawatt farm it wanted to build on the
Lammermoor Range in Central Otago, saying other projects were now more
important.
Green Party energy spokesman Gareth Hughes, whose party
hadn't taken a position on the project, says Meridian was one of the
state-owned assets National campaigned to sell up to 49 percent of in
its 2011 election campaign and this may be linked to Meridian's
decision.
"Given Meridian is the largest electricity state-owned
asset up for sale, this would have brought in quite a high degree of
potential investor uncertainty, because we've got a $2 billion project
that's dragged on for years," he told Radio New Zealand.
Mr Hughes said the decision showed the value of a considered Resource Management Act processes.
"The
risk of fast-tracking, which is what we're seeing under the current
government, is that these projects might go ahead without people
actually getting a say."
One of the high-profile opponents of the project, poet Brian Turner, is delighted the farm would not be built.
"We've
shown that if you hold the line and don't buckle in the face of the
kind of financial and corporate bullying, sometimes the wider population
can prevail."
The project was planned to be big enough to power
every South Island home but residents wanted the tussock-clad ranges
protected from 160m-tall turbines and 12m-wide access roads.
The
Environment Court in 2009 overturned a 2007 decision granting resource
consent, but the High Court allowed a Meridian appeal against in 2010
and referred it back to the Environment Court.
NZN