Speaking to a packed audience on the opening day of the Electrify Queenstown conference yesterday, the Xero founder lamented the country’s lack of ambition and continuing brain drain.
He had spent a lot of time in the past few years thinking about how the country could develop a sustainable competitive advantage in something.
"For me, the answer was really easy — renewable electricity. It could be our version of Saudi Arabian oil."
He was advocating for the separation of infrastructure from retail services in the electricity sector in the same way that Telecom was split into Chorus and Spark more than a decade ago.
"At the moment, we have vertically-integrated power companies trying to do both infrastructure and retail.
"That model just doesn’t support long-term infrastructure investment.
"Let’s do what we did with telecommunications — separate the generation and transmission assets into a dedicated infrastructure entity."
The government had shown foresight to build massive hydro-electric schemes decades ago, which meant 88% of the country’s electricity was generated from renewable sources.
However, New Zealand only had six weeks’ energy storage, creating a scarcity factor that led to "really high" electricity prices.
Building infrastructure for six months’ storage would give New Zealand "energy sovereignty".
Although a difficult decision would have to be made on the "least worst place to put it", the alternative was the country’s continuing dependence on the global supply chain for coal.
Mr Drury said he was "road-testing" his ideas for electricity sector reform, including speaking to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon about it recently.
"Our goal could be to have the lowest-priced renewable energy in the world."
The three-day Electrify Queenstown event is aimed at helping businesses and households electrify, decarbonise and reduce their energy bills.
It continues today with an exhibition and trade show at the Queenstown Events Centre and ends tomorrow with a day of field trips to local energy projects.
