Calibre of debate in NZ has improved but more action needed on agriculture, says Michael Liebreich

Monday, 8 June 2026

Prominent energy consultant Michael Liebreich, known for championing the inevitability of a rapid transition to green energy and EVs, says he is encouraged by the development of the debate on clean power in New Zealand over the past seven years.

He tentatively endorsed the Government’s proposed investment in an LNG import facility, arguing that addressing agricultural emissions remained the country’s biggest challenge.

But he said New Zealand could still benefit from a vision of how it would handle the transition away from fossil fuels, to provide more certainty to businesses and to avoid “a political whipsaw” each time the government changed.

London-based Liebreich, who founded Bloomberg New Energy Finance, drew a large crowd during his first visit to New Zealand in 2019, when he predicted the rapid rise of solar power and an accelerated decline in the market for petrol and diesel cars, while also taking a swipe at Fonterra for its use of coal in drying milk powder.

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In an address hosted in Wellington by the Electricity Retailers and Generators Association on Friday, Liebreich said the world was now “almost in the middle third” of the transition to green energy.

Wind and solar energy accounted for about 90% of all new generation worldwide, while deliveries of cars and light trucks powered by internal combustion engines were falling, after peaking in 2017, he noted.

The Middle East conflict was providing “another turn of the screw” on fossil fuels, he said.

Globally, “resilience”, followed by cost, is highest on the minds of energy policy-makers, with climate change “quite far down at the moment”. But that didn’t matter as the outcomes those priorities implied were essentially the same, Liebreich said.

Far from being a rare event, the Middle East conflict was the 14th shock that the oil market had experienced in 60 years — defined as a year in which the oil price moved up or down by more than 30% — he said.

“It’s constant; it is the nature of being reliant on a volatile commodity that’s politically-contested and comes from regions and countries in the world that have got instabilities.”

While he hesitated to call it an energy strategy, Liebreich agreed New Zealand should have “some sort of understanding” of where the country was headed.

“There are coordination problems, and businesses have to make investment decisions, so they need to know how reliable the power system will be, for instance.”

By 2035, perhaps 60% or 80% of car sales in New Zealand should be EVs and they should comprise 40% of the vehicles on the road, he suggested.

Despite his confidence in the economics of green energy, Liebreich has downplayed the importance of squeezing the last 5% of fossil fuels out of the grid and he tentatively backed the Government’s proposed investment in an LNG import terminal.

Ministers have promoted LNG as a way to shore up the energy system over the next 15 years or so, while helping manage a rapid drop-off in domestic gas production.

Liebreich said he was coming down on the side of saying “yes” to LNG because he was “a bit of a resilience hawk”.

But he said the best outcome would be to have access to the gas on hand, in reserve in storage, and not to use it.

It was important not to have a single point of failure in the supply chain, he said, simply remarking, “one drone” to convey the nature of the potential threat.

Asked whether New Zealand had made the progress he hoped for in 2019. Liebreich said he didn’t have “terribly high expectations” then.

“Since New Zealand already had fairly clean power and there was no consensus on emissions from agriculture, the only places to go were heating and transport, which are both sectors where it takes time to turn over assets.

“The most vibrant discussion at the time was around the supply side – in particular the gas ban – which has very little impact on emissions. Also, everyone was very distracted with talk of hydrogen cars, trucks, fertiliser, energy storage and aviation.”

While there had been only limited progress reducing New Zealand’s actual carbon emissions, the debate over the energy transition was “now of a much higher calibre”, he said.

“There is a real focus on electrification, on short-term resilience, long-term resilience for dry years, and the need to get off diesel.

“It feels like there is much more pragmatism. As long as the overall consensus on the need for action remains intact, it’s better to be pragmatic about achieving big chunks of progress fast, rather than endlessly debating what purity looks like.”

Liebreich said New Zealand could afford to take time reducing emissions from aviation, given that contributed only a few percent of emissions, and “even on the last 5% in the power sector”.

“But if you fail to address emissions from agriculture, then that’s a real problem.”