Google exec’s visa comes amid solar power gold rush

Opinion: Email chain provides no evidence NZTE really understood what was unfolding in solar power industry when it smoothed the way for a Silicon Valley player, writes Tom Pullar-Strecker.

The rights or wrongs of government agencies helping wealthy, foreign businessmen make New Zealand their first or second home became hotly debated after contrarian US billionaire Peter Thiel was granted citizenship and investment subsidies in 2012.

But it took an Official Information Act request and the intervention of the Ombudsman to shed more light on Immigration NZ’s decision to grant Google senior vicepresident Urs Holzle an exemption to move here last year.

Immigration issued a 12-month ‘‘critical workers’’ visa to Holzle on the recommendation of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, at a time when most people could not enter the country due to Covid-19 restrictions.

Holzle’s seniority at Google may be best conveyed by the fact he was the internet giant’s sixth employee.

For several months his reasons for being in New Zealand were a mystery, with neither agency willing to provide information on Holzle’s status.

A report by US technology news site Cnet suggested his move to New Zealand might be more just for a change of scene.

It quoted Holzle as saying that ‘‘after three decades in the US, my wife and I both felt it was time to consider a new location’’.

‘‘We’ve decided to spend a year in New Zealand and see how we like it.’’

But it emerged in April that Holzle was granted residency to conduct due diligence on a proposed stake in solar power start-up Helios Energy, which announced its intention to make a $1.3 billion investment in gridconnect solar plants.

Helios director Jason McDonald said the company had been quietly developing plans for a pipeline of grid-connected solar farms sufficient to produce about 1.8 terawatt-hours of power, which would equate to about 4% of the country’s electricity needs.

Macdonald is chairperson of Wellington car-sharing business Mevo and a former head of sales and marketing at Meridian.

Whether Helios really does become a vehicle for a $1.3b investment in solar power remains to be seen, but it does seem to be making solid progress in its bid to become a player in the power market.

Late last month it announced it had secured an agreement with Transpower to connect its first proposed solar farm, northeast of Transpower’s Edgecumbe substation near Whakata¯ ne, to the national grid, saying that would be a $150 million to $200m investment.

This month it announced it had also selected a site and reached an agreement with landowners for a second, slightly smaller solar farm south of Greytown.

There are lots of other investors eyeing the opportunity to build New Zealand’s large, grid-connect solar power plants, and they are involved in a bit of race to cash in on what should – for the early birds – be a slamdunk opportunity.

Analysts at financial advisory firm Forsyth Barr calculated in April, just prior to Helios first unveiling its plans, that 12 different businesses were planning to develop 2.5TWh of solar power and that another 2TWh of solar power was being more loosely discussed.

But it said it didn’t expect them all to follow through to completion.

What seems to be unfolding in the power market is a bit of gold rush as new entrants and now established gentailers race to build the first few terawatt-hours of grid-connected solar power before additional investments become more marginal and the business cases harder to stack up.

Lodestone Energy, whose investors include Sir Stephen Tindall, Sam Morgan and Rod Drury, expects to begin construction on its first site in Kaitaia next month and appears to be leading the pack among the potentially larger players, with Helios perhaps close behind.

On Tuesday, British-backed firm Harmony Energy NZ received resource consent to develop a solar farm in Waikato capable of powering 30,000 homes.

Correspondence released by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) under the OIA shows that as well as offering Holzle and his partner a visa to come and live in New Zealand during the period of border closures, it also offered Helios help with introductions to other investors and local iwi and help selecting sites for solar farms.

There are several reasons to argue that Holzle deserves a warm welcome and that his

Hopefully Holzle will be here to stay – he seems like a great guy.

investment interest could be beneficial for both the economy and the environment.

Independent generators such as Lodestone and Helios may be prodding the country’s statecontrolled gentailers to stop dragging their heels and more meaningfully ramp up their own investments in renewables.

The more new entrants snapping at their heels, the more pressure.

Assuming they are successful, they could also provide a small but useful foil to the gentailers’ market power in the currently dysfunctional wholesale electricity market.

Swiss-born Holzle is a director of the Worldwide Fund for Nature and appears to have had a lifelong interest in the environment.

For many Kiwis, he will cut a far less controversial figure than Donald Trump-supporting Thiel.

That said, it is surprising there is no evidence in the material released by NZTE or Immigration that the agencies considered whether, by facilitating Holzle’s possible investment in solar, they might just be displacing domestic investment in the same opportunity.

The emails show no signs they attempted to analyse the context in which that investment might be offered or whether the industry that investment would go into was actually capitalconstrained.

That is despite evidence Helios conveyed the fact it was involved in a bit of a race.

Helios co-founder Jeff Schlichting appeared to note Lodestone’s public unveiling in a partially-redacted email to NZTE on May 12 last year, saying he didn’t feel threatened by an undisclosed development.

‘‘Their business model is quite different than ours from what we can tell, and we’re happy to let them grab the spotlight while we go about our work – so long as they don’t muddy the water too much...,’’ he wrote.

Helios would not confirm whether Schlichting was writing about Lodestone, but that same day Stuff had reported Lodestone’s plan to build five solar energy farms in the upper North Island at a cost of $300m.

It is also easy to forget, now that Covid restrictions have been lifted, just how tightly the border was being managed at the time Holzle was granted a visa.

An NZTE spokesperson said ‘‘as a general rule, NZTE Investment considers each New Zealand company on a case-bycase basis’’.

‘‘We take an active role in introducing them to domestic investors, and we maintain strong connections with this sector for that purpose. In the past financial year, 80% or 86 out of 107 of the deals completed by NZTE Investment had a primary investor from New Zealand.

‘‘But there may be companies, like Helios, that would benefit from an international investor who has networks and knowledge that are not readily available within New Zealand, and we look to provide the right connections for them.’’

Holzle is still in New Zealand, which means he will have had his one-year visa extended, and hopefully he will be here to stay – he seems like a great guy.

But could we be confident that ‘‘NZ Inc’’ will come out on top if Holzle decided he didn’t want to settle in New Zealand long-term, and took a large slice of a solar generation business that could have been locallyowned back off overseas?

More broadly, is it fair or necessary for local investors to compete with overseas investors who may have the inducement of residency thrown in as a freebie?

Arguably, those are questions NZTE should have at least considered.