Peter Minten

What does the above picture show? We see a bunch of wind generation on the background. Closer by, we spot several industrial buildings and dotted around the picture are glasshouses everywhere. They are all linked together.

The windfarm generates enough electricity to power a number of datacentres being installed here (top left-hand corner). Those datacentres generate enough low waste heat and cooling water to supply it 690 hectares of glasshouse agriculture using the latest hydroponic systems. (690 hectares is almost 3 ½ times the total area of glasshouse farming in the whole of New Zealand) And ths has been built in a small Dutch municipality named Hollands Kroon. They went a great length to achieve this with even sending their municipality CE and some councillors to Seattle and Silicon Valley.

The result is a 1 billion Euro local economy which created more than 2400 jobs in a wide range from IT specialists, security personnel, Corrugated box makers, glasshouse agricultural workers, glasshouse technicians and many more. And that was achieved in only a decade.

Can we copy and paste for Whakatāne? I surely believe we can. We need to replace the windmills with solar farms, have an entrepreneurial council and chief executive being prepared to go a long distance with lobbying for datacentres and we need engineers capable of thinking outside the box. Soil type is not important because it is all hydroponics, so don’t worry about that.

Have I drawn your interest? You can read more about this at: https://www.agriporta7.nl/?lang=enand at: https://www.hollandskroon.nl/ontwikkelingen/datacenters/

To get ahead in New Zealand requires thinking outside the box. But it requires a different mindset towards science, sustainable engineering and the appreciation of data. Currently I don’t see that happening on both a national - as well as a local level.