Energy Centre 20th Anniversary, 2025

Host: Dr Pauline Herbst (PH)

Guests: Trustees of the Energy Education Trust: Peter Sewell (PS), Norman Goddard (NG), Tim Henaghan (TH), Susan Paterson (SP), Bryan Mogridge (BM)

Producers: Tim Page and Pauline Herbst

Transcript

PAULINE: Hello and welcome to the Energy Centre’s latest podcast, brought to you from its base at the University of Auckland. I’m Dr. Pauline Herbst and today we’re celebrating the Energy Centre’s 20th anniversary. Joining us in the studio are trustees from the Energy Education Trust of New Zealand, including Tim Henaghan and founder Norman Godden.

PH: Tim and Norman, welcome. Can you believe it’s been 20 years? Did you think it would get to this point?

TIM HENAGHAN: To be honest with you, when we established this, I never gave any thought as to its longevity. Had I done so, yes, I think I would have expected it to because we set it up for a purpose and it’s a purpose that there is no end to.

The genesis: from Fletcher Challenge to the Energy Centre

PH: Do you want to talk us through the genesis of the Energy Centre? How did it come about?

TH: Fletcher Challenge Energy had a trust to educate its employees, which was established back in 2001. The deed of that trust required that the majority of trustees, i.e. two out of three, had to be independent of the company. On that basis, Norman and I were invited to fill the independent trustee role.

TH: Shortly after we took our positions, the business of Fletcher Challenge Energy was taken over by Shell. As a result of that, all the employees went to Shell, and we were left with a bunch of money and nobody to give it to. So, we decided that the deed required that money was given to a charitable trust. So, Norman and I decided between us that we should establish our own charitable trust, and that led Norman to lead us to the University of Auckland.

PH: Norman, do you want to tell us how that happened?

NORMAN GODDARD: Yes, I knew John Hood, who was then Vice-Chancellor of Auckland, from his previous experience with the Fletcher Challenge Company. At the time, the Business School was planned, and I think possibly beginning to be constructed and part of the arrangement with the government was that the government would offer a dollar for every dollar raised by the university. Anyhow, to cut a long story short, we arranged for the Energy Centre at the business school to be supported with an amount of money each year. That amount in total was met by the government as part of the cost of construction of the building of the business school.

PH: Okay. And how did you then get the other trustees on board? What were some of your criteria? How did you pick the right people?

NG: Well, trustees at the time were Tim as chairman (sorry, I was chairman), and Greg Galley, who was the managing director of Fletcher Energy prior to being bought by Shell. And so it was no issue really to continue the focus on energy in setting up the Energy Centre at the university.

TH: We decided that there should be more than two trustees. So being very democratic, Norman would select one and I would select one and that’s how Bryan and Peter came on. Qualities we were looking for: somebody who had broad experience and could add value to our deliberations.

The Energy Centre: The vision and the director(s)

PH: What was your vision for the work that the Energy Centre would be doing?

TH: At that time, we didn’t have one. That evolved over time.

NG: The university was finding it difficult to recruit a person to head up the centre. So they made a temporary appointment which enabled the trust to begin the interaction with the university. And then later they made an appointment from within the university for the first director of the Energy Centre. But that took probably a year and a half, about a year and a half, before they found someone to appoint.

PH: Who was the first director?

TH: The first director was Rod Kirkpatrick, but he was a non-academic. The first academic was…

NG: Basil Sharp. Professor Basil Sharp.

PH: And now we have Professor Emilson Silva. So have you noticed, with the different directors, that they take the centre in different directions?

NG: Totally. Oneof the issues with the Energy Centre is that of outreach. And certainly Emilson has really worked on outreach, that is making the Energy Centre develop a high profile with other sectors of the community, including business and industry. And prior to that, there’s probably been more time spent on the academic process than, (not to say that Emilson also isn’t concentrating on that because he is), but he certainly has taken a leap forward in the profile of the Energy Centre in the total New Zealand community.

PH: So I believe, having listened to that, there are a number of nuances within the different sectors involved in energy, and hopefully we can revisit this a little later when we bring in one of our other trustees, Susan Paterson.

The Energy Centre – it’s current role

PH: Now, I wanted to ask you, what is it that the Energy Education Trust does today?

NG: Good question. First of all, we invest funds in various fund managers and that assists to support the Energy Centre, which is also supported by a donation we made some years ago of $2 million to the Auckland University Foundation, which was matched by another donor to the extent of $1 million and that provides a significant income to the Foundation and they allocate an amount to the Energy Centre each year to support it and to help it develop its budget. That is probably what I would regard as the highlight of my career with the trustees.

TH: The fact that we decided to contribute $2 million, as Norman said, matched by a million, that enabled the Energy Centre to actually exist. I’m not sure that if we hadn’t done that, the Energy Centre would be here today because that provides $400,000 a year, roughly up. We would never have been able to afford that on top of other things we do.

NG: And in terms of what we do, we invest, as I said, we’re the fund managers. We monitor those investments through an investment advisor who’s independent in New Zealand. And we meet each quarter with that advisor. Also, we meet with the various fund managers from time to time, at least with two of them each year., As a result of that we have the income from the trusts and sometimes, sometimes, not all the time, we have a significant surplus over and above our contractual arrangements. And with that surplus, we offer grants for research at all participating universities in New Zealand.

What’s next for the Energy Centre? Looking at the past to predict the future.

PH: I mean, that’s incredible that there was this idea, and 20 years on, the Energy Centre exists and from what I understand, it’s very significant, the work that they do with the funding from the Energy Education Trust, not only the scholarships, there’s not only a CASE study competition which students enter into each year, there’s also sectors and projects that get research awards: I believe there’s been geothermal, solar, wind power… And then in addition to that, there’s a summer seminar series, and as you said, a number of outreach objectives and activities that Professor Emilson Silva has spearheaded in his tenure with the Energy Centre. So, I suppose my next question is, what does the next decade hold for the Energy Centre?

TH: Well, I’d like to go back a little bit over our history. We inherited $11 million from the Fletcher Challenge Energy Trust, and we’ve spent over $9 million in the interleading period, and we still have $18 million left. So we seem to be managing this money fairly well.

TH: The next 10 years? Things are changing so quickly today that I’m not sure where it’s going. There’s going to be obviously more automation and I think the transmission of electricity is going to develop significantly. But the one thing that doesn’t seem to be very successful so far is storage of electricity. So I think there’ll be a lot of research into that side. Because we can produce it, we can transmit it, but we’re not very good at storing it. So just one person’s view.

NG: And over the next few years, we’ll continue with the research grants when we have surpluses. And just looking at some of the figures I have here, we’ve spent about $1.6 million on research grants. And about $1.1 million on scholarships, of which there’ve been about 200 undergraduate scholarships over the years, and 12 master scholarships, as well as postdoc fellowships and postgraduate scholarships over all those years. Hopefully, we’ll be able to continue that and perhaps grow it, particularly in terms of the amounts available for scholarships.

PH: I mean, that is incredible because energy, it takes up every part of our lives, particularly with technology and the way we’re living from now for the foreseeable future.

TH: The trustees are very enthusiastic. I think one of the reasons there is that enthusiasm is that we share the jobs. In other words, the scholarships rotate amongst us, judging the case studies rotates amongst us. So we all have an active part in every aspect of the trust’s operations.

PH: Now, if you’ve just joined us, you’re listening to Dr. Pauline Herbst and the trustees of the Energy Education Trust, who sponsor and support the Energy Centre, talk to us about their 20-year journey to get to this point. In the studio right now, we have Bryan Mogridge, Peter Sewell, and Susan Paterson.

30 years of energy in New Zealand

PAULINE: Susan, welcome.

SUSAN PATERSON: Thank you.

PH: Now, Susan, you bring an incredible depth and breadth to the trust. From what I understand, you were involved in the establishment of the electricity market in the 1980s, 90s. And since then you’ve been a member of a number of energy focus boards. So we’re looking at the ECA, Transpower, the Electricity Authority and Lodestone Energy Limited. That’s a lot. What made you decide to become part of the Energy Education Trust?

SP: I was approached by Norman and we knew each other going back a long time actually from Fletcher Energy days. I was just really excited with the purpose of the trust, what they’re focusing on, but also energy and electricity is so fundamental for the country. And there’s so many different aspects to it that we need really good research. We need bright people in the industry. The more that we can help fund those sorts of people and get them doing interesting projects, looking towards the future, because electricity and energy isn’t something that you just change overnight.

SP: It really does need serious long-term planning and a really good vision, but then it also needs sort of some independent research, etcetera, being done. And there are a lot of vested interests in the industry, but many of the issues that the industry faces are much broader than one or two vested interests, and it can’t really just be changed overnight. So I think it is the whole national impact of getting energy and electricity right in the country but also having the funds to help people actually do some deep thinking, some deep research. But likewise, being able to fund students and get them excited about working in the industry is really important.

Change in the energy sector since inception

PH: Yes. It’s a slow-moving, almost glacial change in some aspects. In your opinion, over the 30 years odd, that you’ve been involved, what do you think has been the most significant change in the energy sector over this time?

SP: Oh, I mean, there’s no doubt the original establishment of the market in the early 90s was the most major change. Prior to that, only ECNZ, the Electricity Corporation of New Zealand, could generate electricity. It was actually illegal to generate electricity prior to that. The establishment of the market so you could have many more players coming in with new ideas and getting capital from different areas, not just funded by the government, that was a huge change.

SP: But the benefit for New Zealand was we actually came to the party a bit late as far as establishing a market. And that meant that we could look around the world. What was the best way to establish a market? And things like nodal pricing, bidding and merit order dispatch. The whole market actually has allowed a number of new entrants. I mean, there’s well over 100 generators in the market. There’s many retailers. There’s all sorts of innovations, , for customers around, billing, around buyback, about, you know, different offerings, some green energy offerings, some others [like] time of use. The market does allow a lot of innovation and a lot of development. And, the lights haven’t gone out, since the market was established.

SP: Yeah, we have dry years, but you send the right price signals and it’s really interesting. Supply and demand manages to establish itself and, prices do get really high but that is the design of our market. It’s an uncapped market. So I think the most interesting thing is actually the way the market was developed and the innovation that it allows for the country and that’ll evolve going forward. So, I think we’re actually in really good space. I mean, we do have hiccups and there’s lots of debate, but that gets people thinking and that gets new innovations coming in, which is really good for New Zealand.

Investments and project highlights

PH: Absolutely, and I do like how you say the lights haven’t gone out. That’s reassuring. Bryan, I noticed you nodding, and I’d like to bring Bryan Mogridge in here around some of the things that Susan was saying around the market being quite vibrant.

BRYAN MOGRIDGE: Yeah, I think those of us remember the ‘70s when we used to have to always turn our lights off. The government told us to do those sorts of things, and then we had sort of carless days, but I was thinking more about the fact that we were regularly told to turn our lights off at certain times

PH: And that was specifically because there were energy shortages?

BM: Yes, well, and I guess I could argue it’s because the government controlled it – and they couldn’t.

PH: So Bryan, how did you come on board with the trust?

BM: Yeah, I got invited at the beginning, 2003, and had known Norman before and met Tim, and I have a sort of business background, so it’s been a lot of fun.

PH: What has been the most exciting or interesting thing for you around being involved with the Energy Centre over the last 20 years?

BM: Yeah, oh gosh, there’s such a lot of things to think about. Fundamentally, We started with $11 million, which was out of the Fletcher Energy Uninvested Superannuation Fund. We’ve given away invested, you know, on activities around about $10 or 11 million, and we’ve got $19 million left. So we’ve managed the fund fairly well and done a lot of interesting things in terms of providing scholarships for undergrads and post-grads.

BM: We’ve invested in a few start-up companies. One or two have been successful and one or two have been failures in this area. But we’ve also invested in a lot of research around heat and around energy utilisation within industries in New Zealand. So now our goal is to make significant and meaningful impacts on energy to the New Zealand economy. We believe we’re doing that. We’re doing that through the Energy Centre at Auckland University, but with others that we’ve been involved in. So I think that overall it’s very satisfying.

PH: I mean, that is a significant amount of money considering that you’re also sponsoring and funding a vast amount of research, scholarships, the CASE competition… And those of you who’ve listened to the podcast before will have heard our student winners that we interviewed, and if you haven’t, make sure to go and find it and listen to it. It was absolutely fascinating, the solutions that they came up with. You mentioned that there’ve been some really good projects that you’ve seen and one of them was around heat. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about that?

BM: Yeah, there was one at Waikato University that was in agricultural food production, dairy basically, that was to do around with heat wastage out of a chimney (let’s call it that), as smoke, out of the production area. They found different ways to lengthen the size of the chimney to recover some of the heat and then recycle it. So those sorts of things we were interested in.

Sponsoring scholarships

PH: Fascinating. Peter Sewell, I’d like to bring you in now. One of the things that the Energy Education Trust sponsors through the Energy Centre is scholarships. And we had a wonderful talk around some of the people that you have interviewed for these scholarships and why that is quite a passion for you. What makes the scholarships such an exciting part of the role for you?

PETER SEWELL: One of the roles that every one of our trustees enjoy is interviewing these students. There are some great students out there and of course we want to find out what their passion for energy is, and more importantly what they are doing in the community and how they’re funding themselves through university. So we like to see the gleam in their eye and that’s why we get such a great pleasure out of interviewing these students about 15, 20 minutes a time. Then we’ve got to make the hard decision: who are the 10 or 15 scholarships that we award each year?

PH: Yeah, 10 or 15 isn’t very many. How many applications do you get?

PS: Well, it varies from different universities. We’ve got about 5 or 6 universities involved. Some support, some don’t. So usually it ends up that we want to interview about 20 to 30 students. And so it varies, 90, 100 applications. Some years it’s only about 30 or 40. So it does vary, but so we select the ones that we want to interview, and we travel to the universities. The beauty about it, Pauline, is a lot of these students have never been interviewed before. So at the end of the interview, we can tell them the things that they did well so they can go apply for a job with that experience, so we think we’re adding value.

PH: I believe so. Between all of the trustees that I’ve interviewed and looked at, you have an incredible amount of experience and knowledge between all of you. So these students are pretty lucky.

Environmental energy – good for the planet, good for the economy

PH: Susan, I’d like to come back to something you touched on briefly, which is the environment. You sort of mentioned something around green energy and how that is possibly one of the factors and one of those nuanced interests that make up what the energy sector is having to deal with today. Could you tell us a little more about that?

SP: Well, I guess you know, in New Zealand we are pretty blessed with the natural resources that we have. I think what’s been very interesting has been the transition over time of being reliant mainly on hydro energy to now having all sorts of different renewables coming into the market. They are the next most economical projects. So they’re not only good for the economy, but they’re good for the environment as well. And as I say, as the demand for electricity grows (be that through data centres or whatever we need electricity for), and New Zealand on an international basis does have fairly low cost electricity, that we’re seeing this new electricity come to market just as we need it.

SP: We’re not seeing these great big projects like the Clyde Dam and things that run years late and run billions over their project costs. We’re seeing more projects that are smaller in their local communities, serving their local communities, and just being added incrementally as that demand grows. So we do have that.

SP: And from an energy efficiency point of view, which I’ve always been involved with through the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, in my mind, energy is an expensive resource to be using, and we should all use it efficiently. That’s just good for New Zealand.

Benefitting communities

PH: So Peter, thinking around what Susan has just said and around your interest in scholarships and from what I understand, your judging role with some of these student CASE competitions, have there been any projects that have really stood out for you, environmental or otherwise?

PS: Well, I think the main issue at the present time is all about zero carbon emissions. I think it’s great that we can have discussions around that, so most of the students that make the application saying that, yes, they want to do something about the environmental issues, but we are only providing scholarships to enable them to pay their fees through university and eventually they’ll be able to perhaps get on some research project.

PS: But there’s one thing that really I love about these interviews is that the challenge we’ve got as trustees is that you’ve got so many great students out there, but some that are in the marginal area. You know, their marks may not be all that great but they’re doing a great amount in their community. One case came up a couple of years ago where the student, both their parents were out of work. She was very passionate about what she did. So us giving her that scholarship, I had to go back to the trustees. and confirm, this is a marginal case.

PS: I think that’s great with our team, Now that scholarship we gave, there were two of them actually, would have made a significant difference to that person for the rest of their lives because they didn’t have to worry about going and getting a job. So that certainly brought great joy to my heart.

PH: I think that’s quite an incredible story because a lot of the time with scholarships, it is all just around grades and to think that you can actually support someone to perhaps have a little bit of room to grow, spread their wings and see what other work they might be doing within their academic career is an absolute boon.

PH: Bryan, coming back to you and the CASE competitions, have there been any projects that have really stood out in your memory, or perhaps even with some of the research that the Trust has funded through the Energy Centre?

BM: The CASE competitions are interesting because it gives the students a chance to free think. I think one that really sticks in my mind was the idea that this group put together of the likes of Vector becoming fundamentally an energy producer by taking people’s energy off their roofs and then recycling it and selling it. So I think that they’re allowed to free think about what they can do. And my suspicion is that as we move more into the information age, you’ll see much more of that sort of thing.

PH: That’s fantastic.

What will the next decade bring for the Energy Centre?

PH: Now, this is a question for either of you to jump in and field. In the 20 years that you’ve come on this journey, some of you less time than others, what do you think the next decade is going to bring for the Energy Centre?

BM: My view is that the information age and things that surround that will be very important. I think people’s way of approaching how they control and utilise energy, the way energy is provided, and the information that’s shared to make things more efficient will be where I think that it comes.

BM: One thing we haven’t focused on enough is what I would call demand side. We’ve talked a lot about supply side activities, but I think there’s a lot that can be done on the demand side that’s in the home to make devices much more selective about the time and the amount of energy that they utilise. I think we’ve just gone along sort of in a way that energy is sort of basically free and haven’t treated it properly. I think that, as Susan’s rightly saying, I think the market in New Zealand sends you signals when the price is high and we need to have ways for people to actually avoid paying high prices and to utilise their equipment more efficiently.

PH: Some really sound thoughts there because people do tend to treat it as, “you just plug it in the wall, what’s the big deal”? And I do think that’s something that more attention needs to be paid to.

PH: Peter, what were your thoughts?

PETER: We’d recently just had a meeting with all the academics, Professor Emilson and also about 7 or 8 of his research assistants. And we’ve just had a strategy meeting and Bryan convened the whole thing. Our biggest challenge is getting a bang for our buck.

PS: You get these academics, they think that they’ve achieved everything by getting their publication, research, finding, put in a great newsletter or something like that. But we’re saying that we want to get a bigger bang for our buck. How can we have this research that’ll be in line with our objectives of making an economic difference to New Zealand? And it was a real great meeting. So hopefully talking about the next two to three years, we can see more of an alignment with what the university researches, with what our objectives are about achieving a significant difference to the energy sector in New Zealand.

PH: That’s right. It’s a real chicken and egg because obviously with publications, you’re repositing that information and that knowledge for future generations to build on. And it’s obviously it’s a really good indication of bona fides and peer review. But then is that moving quick enough?

PH: So Norman, if I was to ask you, what is the one thing you’d love to see the Energy Centre do or accomplish in the next 10 years with the support of the Energy Education Trust, what do you think you might pick?

NG: I would like the Energy Centre to, be subject to significant funding from the commercial industrial sector. I think Emilson is sowing the seeds of that now. At present, apart from grants from the government and other similar organisations, there’s, as far as I can recall, no funds coming from the industrial or commercial sectors. To see that grow would be wonderful and it would be wonderful to see the Energy Centre strengthened with that funding to employ more researchers and also perhaps some people with some marketing skills to really develop the profile of the centre.

PH: Fantastic. And Tim, did you have anything to add?

TIM: No, I think that Norman’s right. We did have some outside contributors when we started back in the zeros, but they disappeared. So yeah, I think it’s important that the Energy Centre doesn’t just rely on the funding of the trust. And it would be wonderful to get not only their money, but their involvement of the private sector.

PH: Absolutely. And that’s quite an interesting question as well. Why are the industrial and commercial and private sectors not getting involved? And what does that say around, as we may touch on later with the other trustees, around the political wills and means and how to bring that into play in the energy sector?

TH: For people to invest, they’ve got to see value. And that’s where, as Norman has implied, Emilson has worked hard to raise the profile. And once he raises his profile and the information he produces gets in the right hands, then hopefully he’ll attract more funds.

The multi-disciplinary nature of the energy sector

SUSAN: I think one of the most fascinating things about the whole energy sector in New Zealand is how cross-functional it is. You mentioned the case studies before. It’s always blown me away when we judge those case studies, the number of people who are actually new to the sector, but with AI, ChatGPT, everything, they can just go and Google about this, about that, and use these AI agents to explain the energy sector to them. It seems like in a month or so that they take to do that case study, they almost become experts.

SP: But where the really interesting teams really impress is the fact that you do, you need legal, because there’s a lot of legal aspects to the industry. You obviously need electrical engineering, you need regulatory skills, you need economic skills. And so I think it’s the number of factors that actually come together. And some of those teams who have got somebody out of the law school, somebody who’s an electrical engineer, somebody who’s an economist who understands things, somebody who’s financial who looks at the business side of aspects.

SP: But then you’ve got to bring in the whole political side, because again, the regulatory settings and what the ministers decide can make a fundamental difference. We saw that in the 2018 with the banning of expiration, for example. So there can be real game changers that are suddenly made by a political decision And then you look at the ramifications down the line, and we’re running short of fossil fuels to produce energy in times of shortages, and the prices go through the roof. So it is a fascinating aspect, and the Energy Centre can fundamentally fund projects which look across the university and across a lot of the other aspects of research at the university as well.

BM: Just to build on that and what I said earlier, so if you’re talking about the next decade or so, and we’ve been supporting the Energy Centre and been around for 20 years. It takes you about 20 years to build a decent brand. I’d like to think that what we’ve done and what Emilson is now doing is that we’re developing a brand that’s very useful and it will actually become an epicenter for good decisions. Because in the next 10 years, most of us will end up retiring (and hopefully only retiring) and have left a platform that is very useful to the next stage so that the Energy Centre becomes an epicenter for good communications and thought and intellect for New Zealand’s energy and that people in Wellington and others actually see it for what it is.

PH: It’s really legacy building stuff.

SP: That’s what I would like to think.

PH: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining us here today.

PH: You’ve been listening to the Energy Centre’s podcast with Dr. Pauline Herbst. We are celebrating the 20-year anniversary of the Energy Centre, and we’re doing so by having spoken to the trustees here in our studio at the University of Auckland.