Meridian CEO Neal Barclay comments on the UTS finding against it.
OPINION: There is a lot wrong with the electricity sector, but don’t get your hopes high that MPs will fix that. Parliament’s Transport and Infrastructure select committee put in a weak performance on Thursday when it was called on to conduct an annual review of Meridian, the country’s largest power company which is 51 per cent state-owned. I can’t imagine what Meridian’s chief executive Neal Barclay must have been thinking as he left the committee room after meek questioning from our seemingly underprepared representatives. The most damning indictment of the sector’s broader performance is that last month Genesis Energy announced it was taking a mothballed third coal-fired turbine out of storage and adding it to its two coal and two gas turbines at the Huntly power station, the country’s major fossil-fuelled plant.