Fossil fuels. The clue is in the name – energy sourced from burning carbon deposits secreted in the age of the dinosaurs. 

The Iranian fuel crisis serves as a stark reminder of the compelling need to finally wean ourselves off the “oil teat’ if we are to achieve true energy independence for New Zealand,  while accelerated climate change from carbon emissions continues to wreak havoc on our shores, including the transport network right here in Hawke’s Bay. 

I find bitter irony in the fact that the 1979 oil shock was triggered by the revolution through which the current regime in Iran took power, while the most recent crisis has been caused by unilateral attempts to depose it, or bomb Iran into submission.

And further irony in blaming the closure of the Marsden Point Oil Refinery (being one of the ‘Think Big’ projects conceived in response to the 1970s oil shocks), as the reason for eye watering diesel and petrol prices at the pumps, and the risk of running out of imported refined fuel altogether if the war in Iran is not quickly resolved.

In fact the situation we now face is little or nothing to do with the closure of the Marsden Point Oil Refinery.  

Instead, the Iranian crisis simply serves to reveal how woefully ill-prepared we are as a nation in terms of energy independence and resilience, as the direct result of a raft of policy decisions taken by the Coalition Government elected in 2023. These policy decisions have painted New Zealand further into the fossil fuel dependence corner, when momentum had been building towards greater energy security through a transition to locally available renewable resources as our energy supply for the nation.

To back up that statement, consider the following changes to the previous Government’s transport and energy policies. I should note that these changes were made alongside the cancellation of a tragically long list of many other projects which would have significantly reduced our dependency on oil exported through the Straits of Hormuz, right across the broader economy (not to forget, as well as greenhouse gas emissions).

First, the following transport related initiatives in the previous Government’s 2022-25 Emissions Reduction Plan were cancelled: 

• The requirement for new transport projects to demonstrate how they would contribute to emissions reduction objectives, with a high threshold for investment in expanded roads and new highway projects.
• The setting of ‘Vehicle Kilometres Travelled’ targets for major urban areas, which would have forced investment in public transport and cycling.
• Pulling the subsidy for electric vehicle purchases (Clean Vehicle Discount Scheme), along with the exemption from Road User Charges (RUCs) for electric vehicles. 

Second, Minister Brown’s 2024 Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS) was quite radically different to that consulted on by Minister Parker just prior to the 2023 election, including:

• A significant reduction in funding of public transport services (‘upper range’, by about $4 billion over the 10 year period covered by the plan).
• Much greater priority on new Roads of National Significance (RONS), including the Hawke’s Bay 4-lane expressway project.
• Removal of any Strategic Priority for reducing emissions.
• Scrapping proposed Fuel Excise Tax increases to fund transport investments in favour of a transition to road user charges (the first step towards that: requiring electric vehicles to pay RUCs).
• A so called “No frills” approach to investment in walking and cycling related transport projects.

From a Hawke’s Bay perspective, the impact of these changes was felt directly, in at least the following two ways:

• The Transport Agency categorically rejected our Regional Transport Committee’s plea to “future proof” the Expressway to enable later integration of cycling and bus lanes. This was said to be contrary to the “no frills” approach of the new GPS. Instead, the project will be all about cars and trucks, all the more reliant on petrol and diesel given financial incentives for new EVs  have been removed as well. 
• Our new public transport network (launched earlier this year) providing an affordable alternative to petrol hungry cars and stressed wallets, had to be significantly trimmed back to operate within the existing budget, meaning reducing the frequency of buses on the new direct routes by about half the frequency we had planned for. This is another major setback, because bus frequency is the single most important driver of public transport uptake (i.e. knowing that if you miss one bus, there is another one coming soon!). 

Aside from all of that, as the 2026 Infrastructure Plan warns, New Zealand needs to do a much better job of prioritising maintenance of the road assets we already have, rather than new builds or enhancements, as with the $50 Billion or more of RONS projects proposed under Minister Brown’s transport GPS in 2024.

A stark lesson of Cyclone Gabrielle was that a lack of priority on road maintenance,  drainage and culvert systems in particular, not only led to catastrophic damage to State Highways 2 and 5 requiring hugely expensive repairs taking many months, but cut off rural communities which were entirely dependent on those road corridors. This maintenance deficit is the result of systemic political bias in favour of shiny new road projects over decades, with the ‘impressive’ list of RONS projects in GPS 2024, being a classic case in point.

As I see it, if the current fuel crisis is our “1979” moment, the response should not be to “Think Big” but instead,  “Think Smarter”. 

Think about how many buses Hawke’s Bay could fund from the $800M being spent on 4 laning an existing road (the Expressway), and how much congestion on that road could have been reduced through those extra bus services, leaving it free for freight and other more essential trips, such  building, plumbing and electrical contractors, couriers and the like.

Think how much larger, cheaper and more diverse our secondary electric vehicle market would be right now, if RUCs hadn’t been imposed on EV’s, and the subsidy removed.

These retrograde steps are exactly in the wrong policy direction.

The benefits of fast peddling a transition to renewable energy are not just reduced carbon emissions, but greater independence from global disruptions to the fossil fuel market driven by increasing geopolitical  chaos, and the so called collapse of the ‘rules based order’. 

If New Zealand cannot achieve that degree of independence and resilience – from our current baseline of circa 90% of all electricity generation already from renewable energy sources – who on the planet can?

Yet another irony, given that about 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions in New Zealand come from transport, is that our road network has borne much of the brunt of climate change in recent years. This very road network is the lifeline between the farm gate and Napier Port on which the economy in Hawke’s Bay so critically depends.

Instead of entrenching our dependence on fossil fuels through building more four lane expressways, we need to make a radical U-turn and head to a place that will not only leave everyone better off economically, but reduce the very greenhouse gas emissions that have caused so much damage to the road network in  the first place, through climate change.

In this respect, ‘all roads’ should lead to the same Rome, a renewable energy future for the whole economy, making Marsden Point … beside the point!