News
YEPN looks to move beyond Wellington
The Young Energy Professionals Network aims to have an autonomous chapter in Auckland by September as it looks to grow its membership in 2018.
The group has about 120 members. Most of these are based in Wellington but YEPN co-chair and Powerco gas asset strategy manager Nicolas Vessiot says the group wants to reach those outside of the capital city.
“We’ve got a big membership base here in Wellington. Some former members have moved away from Wellington so we’ve got a few people based in Auckland and we want to organise more events in the different centres.”
Auckland will be the test case for YEPN. It is a natural choice for the network to expand into because there are a number of industry players there, Vessiot says.
Auckland University also attracts quite a few future energy professionals, he notes.
YEPN was founded in February 2015 and is supported by the BusinessNZ Energy Council which has given the network a platform and some funding to organise events, Vessiot says.
The network exists to upskill members through knowledge-sharing and collaboration and to provide leadership development opportunities.
Contact: Joshua Riddiford, Energynews
What happened this winter? - WELLINGTON, September 2017
On 18 September 2017, Emily Calvert (Market Analyst at Transpower) and Rosie Read (Energy Modelling Analyst at Meridian Energy) presented their insights on how this dry winter affected the security of electricity supply. Whilst this winter may have seemed very wet to those living in the North Island, the inflows in major hydro catchments in the South Island were at their lowest on record. Due to our high reliance on hydro generation, this situation led the electricity industry to be on the ‘watch’ for an increased risk of supply outage. Emily and Rosie explained how their teams from Transpower and Meridian Energy monitor hydro storage, how they analyse and report security of supply information to the wider industry, and how they ‘predict’ dry winter events in order to lower the risk of supply outages in the future and manage these as required.
See here both presentations:
Emily Calvert Transpower
Rosie Read Meridian
Environment and economic effects of new technologies - WELLINGTON, JUNE 2016
On June 8, the Young Energy Professionals Network hosted an event at the BusinessNZ Energy Council's offices exploring the effects of new technologies on New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions. Simon Coates presented Part 1 of Concept Consulting's three-part report looking at the environmental, economic and social impacts of new technologies. Part 1: Emissions Impacts looks at electric cars, solar panels and batteries, and considers the impact on emissions from the electricity and transport sectors, as well as embodied emissions produced during the manufacture of each technology. His presentation, also covered the recently released Part 2: Economic impacts looking at the benefits and costs of those technologies.
To view a copy of Simon's presentation click here
Asia Pacific Energy Leaders' Summit & Future Energy Leader/Young Energy Professional Network Workshops - Wellington, March 2016
On 16-17 March 2016, the BusinessNZ Energy Council and the World Energy Council (WEC) hosted the Asia-Pacific Energy Leaders' Summit, focussed on delivering Energy and Infrastructure Resilience. As a part of that, we held a NZ Future Energy Leader / Young Energy Professional Network workshop themed 'Investing in our Energy Future'. Around 25 of us got together for the workshop to deliver on our outcome "To become aligned on the barriers and opportunities to deliver a resilient energy system and generate a call to action for investing in our energy future".
We were lucky enough to have guest speakers Joan MacNaughton from WEC talk about financing energy systems, and Steve Alesech from Z Energy talk about Z's Biodiesel project – applying a lens of resilience considerations to these areas. We also went through the survey results and based on themes that came out of that, work shopped each theme and generated a number of 'calls to action'. We presented the workshop outputs at the Summit the following day. The three high-level calls to action we presented were:
- Clear direction from government and stable policy
- Share the NZ energy story across our society
- Stimulate investment by engaging with financial markets
To view our workshop presentation click here.
To view a PDF of the high level survey results click here.
To view the presentation from Joan MacNaughton on financing energy systems click here.
To view our presentation to the Summit click here.
Steve Alesech did not use slides but we did play a short video to familiarise people with the Z Biodiesel project, you can find that here.
