In 2009, Contact announced it was revisiting plans for dams on the upper and lower Clutha, at Tuapeka Mouth, Queensberry, Luggate and Beaumont, costing between $300 million and $1.5 billion. The schemes had been proposed by Contact's predecessor, the Electricity Corporation of New Zealand, more than 20 years ago.
Contact chief executive Dennis Barnes was reported this week as saying the Clutha hydro project was on the "back burner". He was unavailable for comment yesterday, but Contact spokeswoman Janet Carson said geothermal energy remained the priority development area for Contact.
However, it continued to investigate wind, hydro and gas-fired developments. Contact was still assessing the four Clutha hydro development options and they "remained open".
"Our conversations, data assessments and research undertaken to date are showing that pursuing further hydro development is more likely to be further down the track, probably into the next decade, and we are considering the implications of that."
She declined to elaborate.
The Clutha hydro project was on the "back burner", as opposed to "priority developments" under construction such as the Te Mihi power station, near the Wairakei geothermal power station, northwest of Taupo, Ms Carson said.
There had been no "change of priority" by the company towards hydro development. She declined to comment on how much Contact had spent so far developing the Clutha project.
The Clutha River Forum, an alliance of river and conservation groups opposed to "think-big" hydro development on the Clutha, was set up in 2009. It launched a "Option 5 - no more dams" campaign.
Asked for comment about delays to the hydro project, forum co-ordinator Lewis Verduyn, of Wanaka, said the world was changing rapidly "and these former business-as-usual projects are simply not realistic".
"We've always considered further `think-big' dams on the Clutha to be inappropriate, outdated and uneconomic. Now, Contact is facing a landslide of economic and environmental issues that were largely unforeseen just a few years ago.
"With electricity demand falling, the high cost of servicing capital and record low flows in the Clutha River, it's difficult to imagine how these plans could ever be viable in the future," he said.
Contact's stance on the project comes in the wake of the decision last month by Meridian Energy to shelve its plans for a $2 billion wind farm on the Lammermoor Range. Meridian chief executive Mark Binns said shelving the Project Hayes wind farm was "a prudent commercial decision", as the company had other higher-priority projects.
Asked at that time if the decision had any impact on the Clutha hydro plans, Contact hydro projects manager Neil Gillespie said the hydro plans were at a different stage from those of Meridian's Project Hayes.
It had a consented project, while Contact had yet to narrow down the options and was "quite some time away" from thinking about resource consents.
