The government is making a poor economic move with its plan to import natural gas according to Saul Griffith, renewable energy advocate and former climate advisor to Joe Biden.

Saul Griffith is an author, inventor, scientist and co-founder of Rewiring America. A few years back he managed to convince Joe Biden to rewrite the Democrats’ Green New Deal and pitch it as an Inflation Reduction Act. The idea was to rewire America’s economy with renewable energy and now Saul is making a pitch for Aotearoa to do the same.

Griffith says the government’s current plan to address New Zealand’s power crisis by spending $1 billion importing natural gas over the next couple of years would discourage investment in renewable options like geothermal, wind and solar. He believes the gas industry has made shrewd early moves to convince those in power that gas is a cheap and convenient solution when in reality, Griffith warns, gas is an unstable investment into a sustainable future.

“Gas has been getting expensive faster than the rate of inflation for the last 25 years. It’s gotten more volatile because it’s on the international market. You have things like the Ukraine situation, so it’s only going to get worse in that respect.”

Griffth advocates for government-funded infrastructure and market reforms suggesting a small public investment in electrification could attract substantial private finance, which would ultimately save the country $10 billion annually and $100 billion by 2040.

Talking to Bernard Hickey on The Spinoff’s economics podcast When the Facts Change,  Griffith urges the New Zealand government to embrace electrification as a nation-building project to boost economic productivity, lower living costs and meet emissions targets.

Click here for more episodes of Bernard Hickey’s economics podcast When the Facts Change. Made possible by Kiwibank.