Lobby group Sustainable Energy Forum castigates the government for its lack of action with regard the looming worldwide peak oil production – which it says could happen as early as 2007.

“Because the implications of Peak Oil are so serious for New Zealand, SEF recommends the government, and individuals, start planning for the ‘Peak Oil crisis’ now,” says SEF transport and peak oil group co-ordinator Tim Jones.

Meanwhile, the parliamentary commissioner for the environment, Morgan Williams, has chided the government for its lack of overarching energy policy.

“Since the government’s October 2000 energy policy framework, no cohesive energy policy has been built on,” said Williams in his “Energy, Electricity and the Environment” report tabled in Parliament yesterday.

Jones said the International Energy Agency predicted peak oil would occur some time during 2013-37, but that the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, comprising experienced petroleum geologists, was currently predicting the peak would be reached in 2007.

“Recent events, such as the sharp increase in world demand for oil, make nearer dates more likely . . . if the peak is imminent, then we need urgent action to mitigate the worst of its effects,” Jones said.

Measures could include greater use of renewable energy resources, reducing the demand for transport fuels, and re-evaluating roading projects, both proposed and under development, in the light of the likely shortage of transport fuels.

But the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand has dismissed SEF’s claims.

“Their views are oversimplified and alarmist,” PEPANZ executive director Mike Patrick told EnergyReview.net today.

Meanwhile, Williams’s report described the recent Ministry of Economic Development Sustainable Energy report as “all talk and no action”, saying the next steps in energy policy must focus on outcomes rather than more discussion.

The energy sector needed to know what the government wanted so it could make decisions on what it had to deliver over the next 50 years energy.

“This lack of vision is of considerable concern, particularly given that the sector now has to make a number of major decisions, the outcomes of which will determine the shape of the sector for decades to come,” Williams said.

New Zealand needed to look more closely at distributed generation - making electricity close to where it is going to be used from sources such as the wind, the sun, waves and waste - and at increased energy efficiency, according to Williams.