The Government should invest in alternative energy projects?

On average, everyone strongly agrees with consensus between 311 voters.

Reasons To Disagree

No government currently in office has yet been able to use alternative energy sources for the majority of its power needs.. Most in countries where it is used get less than 10 per cent by this means.

No - gummint make a pigs ear of everything they touch. Entrepreneurs should invest in whatever they see as economically better. Like nuclear power - it is neccessary - it can come - and it WILL come - to the advantage of everybody and, YES, even your precious environment.

Reasons To Agree

Government doesn't need to invest - but could take steps to make clean alternatives more streamlined to construct than the dirty traditional sources.

It is being researched everywhere over seas now we need alternative fuels instead of diesel we need a home heating oil made from rendered down plastic bags, rendered down meat fat, overseas they process soya bean curds etc. I have a diesel home heating system and have been waiting for biodiesel or alternative oil to be avilable - WHEN is this happening before oil based products hit sky high I hope? We need cars converted to alternative recyclable fuels (The greens seem to be on to it but - please hurry the trialing up).

Alternative power is essential, innovative, greener in most cases and complementary to existing power generation. No one needs to "replace" conventional generation with alternatives... but we may need to one day, so investment now is essential

Nuclear power is a clean and reliable alternative fuel

It should. But it should invest in adequate, non invasive energy projects. In England recently Ocean Turbines have been used to generate electricity due the huge amound or access to good ocean currents that country has. Hello? NZ is also an island and has a LOT of access to regions where ocean turbines could be developed - even in areas that are relatively unused or inaccessible by people - just to make the idea more palatable. Such a scheme would not be as intrusive either visually or aurally as wind turbines - it certainly wouldn't infringe on people's homes and it has the advantage of using a natural resource - for those opposed to nuclear power - which i personally support.

yes the government does need to support alternative (renewable) energy. Sure nuclear would be good, but the waste that it produces will become an even bigger problem. We live in a country full of natural elements why not harvest them to our full potential - wind and sun. People need to stop worrying about the 'look' of things, or how ugly they may seem, inevitably we all uses electricity everyday, it wont be so 'ugly' when we run out.

Nuclear Power.

Go nuclear!

Nuclear is perhaps a little too much for a small country like ours, but there is plenty of untapped hydrological, wind, solar, and geothermal power in NZ, so we should eliminate oil and coal plants, and then start investigating alternatives for vehicles.

NO NUCLEAR it will destroy our country

NO NUCLEAR POWER!!! We don't want to be another Germany and we definately don't want to be another Japan. New Zealanders are smarter than that. How about people stop worrying about how pretty our landscape looks and start letting companies like Genisis carry out their wind power projects.