Our barn is a little over 100m from the closest power source. I'd gotten an Ecoflow for backup power on our house supply water pump, but now that we've had a solar and battery installed, it's our around the property power.
These 3 x 635W panels are basically perfectly sized in voltage to just stay within the input limits and recharging after welding and grinding all day is no issue.

The standby losses on these units are awful, but their high output and fast charging are fantastic. Been using one variety of them or another for years now.

This isn't to flog TOP in particular. Just to put it in context.

Right now, according to the EA's energy investment pipeline to reach TOP's goals they have to do exactly...nothing.

Up until about 2031, a half decade away, only the already committed and actively pursued projects have to be completed. Only a fraction of the possible generation capacity in the pipeline has to be built to meet their goals.
Based on the rates of projects (in the last 3 years) cancelling, moving from "other" to "confirmed," etc. moves our dates out to 2034 of current projects meeting TOP's goal.*

I also use a 20% ICP adoption s curve for home solar. 30 percent is probably more reasonable, but I was keeping it conservative. It only moves the cross-over point up to 2035 instead.

*TOPs generation goals essentially line up with the MBIE modeled "Innovate" energy consumption amounts.

>Innovation The Innovation scenario models increased rates of development and uptake of new technologies. We assume that new and improved technologies enable rapid electrification of both transport and process heat. This results in a faster reduction in technology costs across the economy (e.g., wind and solar generation and EVs). While the rate of technological change and electrification is increased, total population and demand growth remains the same as in the Reference scenario.

The reluctance I've seen in many New Zealanders to electrify makes this one seem a bit "optimistic" to me. I personally would guess we're stuck dependent on more of our energy from fossil fuels than that for longer.

Golden Bay Cement supplies around 60% of New Zealand's cement. The Government has decided it is too strategically important to let close, and has now committed up to $60m to keep it operating.

That comes after roughly $230m worth of free NZUs since 2010 and $16m of public funding for its tyre-burning conversion.

At what point does this stop being a private business and start looking like a case of socialising the costs while privatising the profits?

If taxpayers are expected to carry the risk because the country cannot afford to lose the plant, perhaps we should own part of it.

I wrote about the case for nationalising Golden Bay Cement, and why it is much less radical than it might sound.

Full article here:
https://thereverendjc.substack.com/p/if-golden-bay-cement-is-too-important

If Golden Bay Cement is too important to fail, why don't we own it?

Whangārei Mayor Ken Couper recently welcomed the Government's decision to support Golden Bay Cement with the observation that some things are "too important to leave entirely to the movements of global markets".

He may have inadvertently made a good argument for nationalising it.

The Government has agreed to provide Golden Bay Cement with up to $60 million to keep manufacturing cement and clinker at Portland until at least 2040. Fletcher Building had been considering shutting domestic clinker production and moving to a cheaper import model.

The Government decided that could not be allowed to happen.

Golden Bay is New Zealand's only fully integrated cement manufacturer and supplies around 60 per cent of the domestic market. Cement is essential to roads, hospitals, schools, housing and virtually every other form of major construction. Ministers concluded that becoming overwhelmingly dependent on imports would create an unacceptable national resilience risk.

That may be entirely correct.

But once government has decided that a private company cannot be allowed to make the commercially rational decision to close a plant because the plant is too important to the country, the argument is no longer really about whether government should intervene.

It already has.

The question is why taxpayers should repeatedly pay to preserve a strategically essential private asset without acquiring any of it.

We have already paid quite a lot

The latest $60m is not the first public support Golden Bay Cement has received.

According to the Environmental Protection Authority's industrial allocation records, its cement manufacturing activity received 6,798,894 free New Zealand Units between 2010 and 2024.

Industrial allocation has a legitimate policy purpose. It protects emissions-intensive, trade-exposed industries from being displaced by overseas producers that may face lower carbon costs. But NZUs are nevertheless tradeable assets with a market value.

Matching those annual allocations against historical NZU prices gives them a contemporaneous nominal value of about $230 million.

That is not the same as handing Fletcher a $230m cheque. But neither is transferring nearly 6.8 million valuable carbon units to a private company economically meaningless.

There has also been direct public funding.

In 2021, the Government provided $16m towards a $25m project allowing Golden Bay to use waste tyres as kiln fuel.

Now there is another $60m.

Fletcher subsequently disclosed that the newly released government money had been used by Golden Bay Cement to purchase NZUs.

So we have reached a rather peculiar arrangement. The state gives a privately owned cement company free carbon units, helps pay to modify its plant, and is now giving it public money to buy more carbon units because allowing the plant to close would be too dangerous for the country's construction supply chain.

Across those programmes, Golden Bay has benefited from up to roughly $306m in identifiable public support or economic value since 2010.

Again, these are different kinds of assistance and should not simply be described as $306m of taxpayer cash.

But they raise an obvious question:

How much would Golden Bay Cement cost to buy?

Fletcher does not publish standalone accounts for Golden Bay, so there is no reliable public valuation. Its own disclosures suggest, however, that we are talking about an asset measured in the low hundreds of millions.

Fletcher's 2025 annual report estimated that moving Golden Bay to an import model could result in writing down up to $165m of assets, alongside substantial closure and remediation costs.

That is not a valuation. But when the economic value of public support is already of a similar order of magnitude to the value of the physical assets involved, surely ownership deserves to be somewhere on the policy spreadsheet.

New Zealand has done this before

Nationalisation can sound strangely radical in contemporary New Zealand. Historically, it isn't.

When Air New Zealand nearly collapsed in 2001, the Government decided the national airline was too important to fail. It did not simply give the company $885m and leave shareholders owning the business. The Crown recapitalised Air New Zealand and received an 82 per cent stake.

The principle was simple: taxpayers took extraordinary risk, so taxpayers received equity.

The Crown still owns 51 per cent of Air New Zealand today. It also controls Meridian, Mercury and Genesis and wholly owns Transpower.

New Zealand's heavy industrial history provides an even closer precedent.

Government support was central to establishing New Zealand Steel, and during the enormous Glenbrook expansion of the 1980s the Crown's ownership ultimately reached 89 per cent. Governments built much of our hydroelectric system because electricity infrastructure was considered too important to depend solely on whether individual projects generated an adequate private return.

In 2008, New Zealand even bought its railway back, purchasing Toll's rail operations and creating KiwiRail.

These interventions were not all financial successes. That is an important caution. State ownership can produce bad decisions just as private ownership can.

But the idea that government might own a strategically essential industrial asset is hardly foreign to New Zealand.

We have seen the alternative at Marsden Point

There is also a particularly relevant example only a short distance from Portland.

Marsden Point refinery stopped refining fuel in 2022 because importing finished petroleum products was more commercially attractive.

That decision made sense to its private owners.

It also left New Zealand entirely reliant on foreign refineries for petrol, diesel and jet fuel.

Four years later, the Government is spending up to $21.6m refurbishing tanks at Marsden Point to establish a government-controlled strategic diesel reserve.

Golden Bay Cement presented government with a remarkably similar choice: maintain domestic processing or replace it with imports because imports are cheaper.

This time the Government decided that losing the domestic capability was unacceptable.

Perhaps we learned something.

Other countries do this too

Public ownership of strategic commercial businesses is not confined to economic history.

Norway explicitly describes state ownership as a pragmatic tool for situations where "the market alone does not provide the best socio-economic result". Its reasons for ownership include national preparedness, energy, infrastructure, natural resources and industrial development.

France returned electricity giant EDF to 100 per cent state ownership in 2023, citing energy sovereignty and the enormous long-term investment required to maintain and decarbonise its electricity system.

Sweden wholly owns mining giant LKAB. Indonesia retains majority control of one of its largest cement producers.

These countries have not abolished markets. They have simply decided that private ownership is a tool rather than a law of nature.

Sometimes the interests of an individual shareholder and the long-term interests of a country diverge.

Golden Bay Cement appears to be one of those cases.

Socialising the costs, privatising the profits

There is an uncomfortable phrase for arrangements where the public absorbs extraordinary costs and risks while private owners retain the upside: socialising the costs and privatising the profits.

That description should not be thrown around casually. Fletcher is committing at least $150m of its own investment under the new agreement. It employs hundreds of people, operates a difficult industrial plant and carries genuine commercial and operational risks.

But taxpayers are carrying risks too.

The Government has already determined that if market conditions make domestic cement manufacturing uneconomic, it cannot simply accept the resulting closure.

That is effectively a form of public insurance.

The public is insuring New Zealand against the strategic consequences of Golden Bay Cement failing, but Fletcher continues to own the insured asset.

If the plant thrives, the asset and its profits belong to Fletcher shareholders.

If circumstances make domestic manufacture uneconomic enough to threaten closure, government steps in because the consequences are too important to tolerate.

At some point, that stops looking like a free market and starts looking like public responsibility without public ownership.

Why not take equity?

Nationalisation need not mean a government department running a cement kiln.

Golden Bay could operate as a normal commercial Crown company with an independent board, much as other state-owned companies do.

Nor is 100 per cent ownership the only option.

The Crown could purchase 51 per cent. It could form a joint venture with Fletcher. Future extraordinary assistance could be structured as convertible finance. Or government could simply adopt the Air New Zealand principle: if taxpayers are asked to provide substantial capital to preserve a strategically important company, taxpayers receive shares in return.

Public ownership would not eliminate Golden Bay's carbon emissions, capital requirements or commercial risks.

But neither does the present arrangement eliminate those risks for taxpayers.

It simply means taxpayers help carry them without owning the asset.

Before approving the latest $60m agreement, the Government commissioned an independent open-book financial assessment of Golden Bay Cement. Officials therefore have access to detailed information about its revenues, costs, carbon liabilities and future capital needs.

Perhaps they have calculated that buying part or all of Golden Bay would be terrible value.

If so, show us.

Was Crown ownership considered? Was a majority stake considered? Was taking equity in return for the $60m considered? Was the long-term cost of continued support compared with the purchase price of the business?

Those seem like fairly basic questions when the Government has already decided that the company cannot be allowed to disappear.

Ken Couper is probably right. Some things are too important to leave entirely to global markets.

But if Golden Bay Cement really is one of those things, perhaps New Zealand should stop pretending that perpetual private ownership is somehow the neutral option.

We are already intervening.

We are already carrying some of the cost.

We are already carrying some of the risk.

Maybe it is time we considered owning something in return.

A friend and I recovered a bunch of steel bar from a company going out of business. When presented with a bunch of things of equal length, my brain immediately goes to polyhedra. I just finished this icosahedron the other day.

It's all stored in my barn, which is about 150m from any power source, so I used a battery generator to do all the grinding and welding.

These are going to a sculpture show in October. If I get paid, then it means I'll have made them professionally, which means this will be removed according to Rule 11, which means any professional artists that get compensated for their work aren't allowed to share on here.