New Zealand FEL-100s host workshop looking at resilience issues

 

New Zealand participants in the World Energy Council’s FEL-100 programme, Jenny Lackey, Andrew Millar and Tina Frew, hosted a workshop in association with the Asia-Pacific Energy Leaders’ Summit organised in March by the New Zealand Member Committe of the World Energy Council on the topic of energy resilience.

The theme of the workshop was ‘Investing in our Energy Future’ and aimed to identify the barriers and opportunities to increasing resilience to energy related risks both in New Zealand as well as the Asia-Pacific region more broadly.

The 25 participants at the half-day workshop in Wellington explored the results of a survey which assessed attitudes of FEL-100 participants and members of the New Zealand Young Energy Professionals Network to energy resilience.

The survey identified that many professionals believed that there was more that could be done to identify and mitigate energy resilience related risks, and that there were some barriers that needed to be overcome.

The workshop also heard presentations from Joan McNaughton, Executive Chair of the World Energy Council Trilemma report, and Steve Alesech, from New Zealand’s Z Energy, who helped set the scene for the afternoon.

 

The workshop identified three high-level ‘calls to action’ to help mitigate energy resilience related risks in New Zealand:

1) the need for clear direction from government and stable policy
2) the importance of sharing the New Zealand energy story across society
3) the opportunity to stimulate investment in energy resilient infrastructure by engaging with financial markets.