Report: Energy in New Zealand 2018
markets - evidence and insights, MBIE
Introduction
Energy is an essential part of the economic and social fabric of society. Renewable energy is an important and significant part of New Zealand’s energy supply. New Zealand is also a World leader in terms of harnessing our renewable resource, with a very high proportion of our primary energy supply sourced from renewables compared to other countries.
Reliable data is available on the quantity of renewable energy utilised by large industrial users. However, information on the direct use of renewable energy and use for distributed generation is more difficult to obtain, given that the input energy source (e.g. geothermal or solar) is often used without being purchased and hence it is not well recorded. Where actual information on the direct use of renewable energy is not available, estimates have been made based on research and the knowledge of experts in this field.
The energy sector, and its activity, is measured two separate ways:
-
From the ‘’supply-side’’, looking at the composition of total primary energy supply (TPES) over the year, and measuring the value of energy transformed and consumed in non-energy
related processes. Energy transformation and non-energy uses are subtracted from TPES to derive the ‘’calculated consumer energy demand’’. -
From the ‘’demand-side’’: measuring the value of energy consumed across different sectors of the economy. The resulting derived measure is ‘’observed consumer energy demand’’.
The difference between the two separate measures is reflected in a statistical difference.