Capture Pillar · Node-Siting Model · Phase 3
Five capture chains, one siting method. A six-layer regional score ranks New Zealand’s sixteen regions against each chain; convergence is where the layers stack. Reproduces the Phase 2/3 exhibit — forestry and hydrogen to the central North Island, fertiliser to Taranaki, steel to Waikato, dairy heat to the southern belt.
01 · Locate the convergence
Gold-tinted regions are anchored by at least one chain · numbered pins cross-reference the list at right · hover any region or pin for detail.
Anchors on the map
Verdict key
Green methanol carries no convergence result: greening the country’s one large-scale gas-fed methanol plant has no concentrated domestic CO2 source at hand, so the model flags it niche-only rather than siting it — see row 6 in §03.
02 · Score the fit — six layers, ranked per chain
Read directly off the seed data — not a separately computed model run.
score(region, chain) over 6 layers {surplus_energy, feedstock_cluster, port_cold_chain, water_headroom, workforce_housing, grid_hosting} — rank per chain
Surplus energy
Usable generation left once regional load is met — near-baseload capacity factor counts for more than raw TWh.
family: energy resource + demand
Feedstock cluster
How concentrated the physical input already is — standing forest, ore body, an existing plant, dairy-herd density.
family: food & fibre / production nodes
Port & cold-chain
Export and import throughput, plus reefer capacity, to move what the chain makes.
family: ports & logistics
Water headroom
Freshwater allocation status — an over-allocation flag or a no-new-take river costs a region this layer.
family: freshwater
Workforce & housing
Skills, labour and housing capacity to support a build.
Declared gap — no regional data sourced yet
Grid hosting
Network headroom at the connection point.
pinch points known qualitatively; GXP-level table not yet published
| Chain | Surplus energy | Feedstock cluster | Port & cold-chain | Water headroom | Workforce & housing | Grid hosting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Engineered timber | — | — | gap | |||
| Green ammonia / urea | — | — | gap | |||
| Green H₂ | — | — | gap | — | ||
| Green steel | — | — | gap | — | ||
| Dairy process heat | — | gap | — | |||
| Green methanol | — | — | — | — | gap | — |
Two layers carry a declared gap in the current seed rather than a score: workforce_housing (no regional skills/labour data sourced yet) and the machine-readable grid_hosting table (pinch points — Hamilton N-1, Upper-NI voltage, North Taranaki spine, Auckland Flatbush-Hunua, Northland Huapai — are known qualitatively; GXP-level detail is a later-phase close). The primary/secondary marks above are read qualitatively off the model’s own notes, not a computed numeric score.
03 · Read the fit, chain by chain
Class/region level only — no named facilities, no counterparties, no pricing.
| Chain | Best-fit region | Why (aligning layers) | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engineered timber | Bay of Plenty | Anchors the central North Island's forestry-processing cluster and the country's dominant container/cold-chain gateway (~1.2M TEU, reefer-dominant) — and national supply is under-processed (only ~35–40% of the ~33.6M m³/yr harvest is processed onshore), so the torque is highest here. Energy-light (2–3 MWh/m³), so it doesn't compete for surplus power. | Best-fit |
| Green ammonia / urea | Taranaki | An existing gas-era ammonia-urea plant and its industrial grid spine already sit in the region, so greening is a brownfield conversion, not a new build — the model's own read: “smallest lift, real import-substitution,” against an order-of-magnitude 350–470 kt/yr of import-substituted urea (6–7 MWh/t urea). | Best-fit |
| Green H₂ | Bay of Plenty | The region's geothermal base runs near-baseload — a strong capacity-factor fit for electrolysis — and shares the timber chain's export gateway. Conditional: order-of-magnitude 2050 demand (0.64–1.38 Mt H₂/yr) implies 35–76 TWh of new generation, 80–170% of what the whole country generates today. The site fits; the supply doesn't exist yet. | Staged-conditional |
| Green steel | Waikato | New Zealand holds its own ore in regional titanomagnetite ironsand deposits, with existing integrated steelmaking capacity already sited here; full conversion draws an order-of-magnitude ~2.6 TWh (~6% of national generation) — real but not overwhelming. Conditional: the ore is not standard DRI-grade — a bespoke, unproven-past-pilot process bet, not a siting problem. | Staged-conditional |
| Dairy process heat | Southland | Anchors the South Island dairy belt — one of five processing regions alongside Waikato, Taranaki, Canterbury and West Coast — with regional dairy/meat export capacity, and unlike Canterbury and Otago (both flagged over-allocated) or Hawke's Bay's aquifer, carries no freshwater over-allocation flag in the current staged data. A decarbonisation-siting call on an existing build, not a greenfield one. | Established sector |
| Green methanol | — not sited — | No concentrated domestic CO2 source exists to green the country's one large-scale gas-fed methanol plant (an order-of-magnitude ~26 TWh, ~60% of national generation, would be required). Flagged as a marine-fuel niche opportunity only — not a national-scale capture chain — so it carries no regional convergence result. | Niche-only |