News & Updates

As David Hasselhoff almost sang, jump in my much cheaper and increasingly popular electric car and see why 96% of EV owners would buy a second one; the UK's last coal-fired electricity plant is switched off; the IEA's renewables report makes for good reading; a Rivian takes an unexpected trip down a river; and comedian Tim Robinson gives some helpful advice to climate change communicators.

Gather round the heat pump, children, as we explore the big benefits of battery recycling, how customers giving up control can help the grid, a radical new plan for electric transport in Queenstown, big trucks, big chargers and big electric ferries, and a look at just what has been captured when it comes to carbon capture.

Mike Casey learned about the difference between planting carbon-sucking trees and avoiding carbon-emitting diesel when he was setting up his Central Otago cherry orchard. As he writes in The Spinoff, seeing this laid out was something of an 'emissions epiphany' and showed he had good intentions but was focusing on the wrong thing. He believes "many New Zealanders are also focusing on the wrong thing and could do with an emissions epiphany of their own". Electrifying your car, cooktop, water heater and space heater and powering them with renewable energy from rooftop solar, home battery and the grid is likely to have the biggest impact on your emissions tally. And, by comparing these 'dinner table decisions' with return flights between Queenstown and Auckland, the piece shows that substitution is often more effective than sacrifice.

In this week's e-party, gas in homes is dumb and electric homes are not, a simple solution for those who need to charge their EVs on the street, the wooden winds of change are blowing, and more electric tractor news (this time from the 1920s).

Rewiring Aotearoa's Investing in Tomorrow report shined a light on the multi-billion dollar opportunity in front of New Zealand if we rapidly electrify our homes and cars. Danyl McLauchlan's latest column (paywalled) in The Listener examines what's stopping that opportunity from being realised (hint: incumbent interests and a profitable status quo being protected by industry lobbyists "swarming the Beehive like flies around a dead cat"). As he writes: "Eventually, someone will have to notice tens of billions of dollars lying on the ground, just waiting to be picked up – even if political expedience and ideological dogma are screaming at them to ignore it."

Dr. Rajeev Shah is the president of the Rockefeller Foundation and, as world leaders gather for the United Nations General Assembly, he argues that nothing matters more to individual well-being than energy, which is what leaders need to focus on. As he writes: "Electrifying the world could produce the largest development gains since the 1990s. Electrification is about more than progress for individuals; it makes the world safer and more secure. High energy prices are straining livelihoods at a moment when coups, migration and unrest are destabilizing regions. And because the countries where energy access is lowest are projected to produce as much as 75 percent of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, connecting people there to clean energy can help prevent climate catastrophe for us all."

It's all about the batteries in this week's electrification whip around. Big ones, small ones (but not uncomfortable ones), we love them all and an Aussie legend has developed an affordable way to run our homes with our EVs, a US startup is electrifying school buses and using them to help the grid, Lincoln University rolls out a new electric tractor, Meridian's storage solution is set to power 60,000 homes at peak times (and the company is also set to give away $1.2 million for community electrification projects), and global solar installs continue to exceed industry expectations.

Farmers stand to save money, make money and reduce emissions by adopting electric technology and powering it with solar and batteries. But, as the story in Farmers Weekly says, one sticking point for farmers is that, at present, they can’t gain the full value from rooftop solar when they have multiple connection points on one farm. Rewiring Aotearoa has called on the Government to make some regulatory changes so t farms with multiple connection points are able to group them together for billing purposes and make the most of their solar generation across the business.

Let's raise the roof! 🏠🌞 Customers with solar and batteries need to be seen as a critical part of our 21st Century energy system and academics from Auckland University of Technology agree, pointing out that the 14 biggest rooftops in Auckland would be equivalent to New Zealand’s largest solar farm. The rooftops of 167 schools and supermarkets would provide the same amount of energy, albeit much closer to the point of consumption and that's why we're arguing for a more decentralised system.

Mike Casey talks to Ben Chapman-Smith about how Kiwi farmers can get started on their electric journey and move away from diesel-driven machinery, while also outlining a few requests for Minister of Agriculture Todd McClay that would make on-farm solar even more beneficial.

The rise (and savings) of hot water heat pumps, Fisher & Paykel creates a one-stop-electrification shop, thinking fast and slow on World EV Day, Tesla gets into the train game, Vessev's beautiful boat, Toyota's white elephant, and one positive aspect of keeping up with the Joneses.

If you've got questions about our recent report showing the almost $100 billion electrification opportunity in front of New Zealand, then Lou Aitken probably got the answers at the Investing in Tomorrow launch event. Check out the panel discussion with Dr Saul Griffith, Reserve Bank chief economist Paul Conway and Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment chief economist Geoff Simmons.

Rewiring Aotearoa thinks customers need to be considered part of the energy infrastructure and three academics from AUT agree, arguing that a more decentralised system could play an important role in a more resilient system. As they say: "By focusing only on solar farms, we are using new technologies in an old-fashioned way, by centralising power generation in certain locations, in the hands of a few companies."

"The only way we can begin to hedge our businesses against higher spot prices is by beginning to generate our own electricity," says Mike Casey. Read about how he hopes to turn his energy bill into a revenue stream with the help of solar and batteries that can generate electricity cheaply, and store it to sell when it's expensive.

Mike Casey lays out Rewiring Aotearoa's argument for a regulatory change that would allow customers with solar and batteries to compete fairly with large generators, something we call symmetrical export tariffs. It's important to note that these are not subsidies or rebates. "They simply ensure customers get a true reflection of the value they provide to the electricity market. They are no more a rebate than the half-hourly prices in the wholesale market, paid to generators for their output ... The current pricing structure is compromising New Zealand’s delivery of a secure and affordable power system; it fails to recognise that peak demand could be reduced with the help of household batteries; it perpetuates the idea that we need to spend tens of billions to upgrade our poles and wires to cope with that peak demand; and it is stifling demand for solar and batteries among New Zealanders because their true value is not being accurately reflected in the price paid for export."

The recently announced Energy Competition Taskforce has announced "two packages of work that collectively aim to encourage investment in new generation, bolster competition and provide more opportunities for consumers to manage their own electricity use and costs" and said it is "serious about creating change". Of particular interest to Rewiring Aotearoa was the section about better rewarding customers to "encourage greater uptake of things like time-of-use pricing plans, rooftop solar and batteries, and demand response by industrial firms," as EA chair Anna Kominik said in a press release. This is positive and aligns with what we've been asking for and what we outlined in our symmetrical export tariffs paper, but it is important to note that these are not rebates. This is just cost-reflective two-way pricing that levels the playing field between small and large generators. As Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey says: "To date, every home giving energy back has been getting a bad deal. We believe their contribution to the system should be accurately priced and, as we said when the taskforce was announced, we want a level playing field, not just a slightly less uneven playing field." Casey says this pricing also needs to be mandatory otherwise the EA risks further delay to keeping bills down and building a more secure and resilient energy system. "We talk about guaranteeing investment signals on the big end of town. How about the average Kiwi got some guaranteed investment signals that are fair?"

'New Zealand can't afford not to electrify,' says Q&A's Jack Tame in the introduction to a story about Rewiring Aotearoa's new paper Investing in Tomorrow. He talks to Dr Saul Griffith about the savings at a household level, the $29 million a day electrification opportunity for the country as a whole, the economic slam dunk of rooftop solar and why the Government should be looking to give favourable finance to customers who can become part of our energy infrastructure.

One News has covered the Investing in Tomorrow report, which shows that big household savings from electrification add up to big national savings. As Dr Saul Griffith says about the $29 million day that New Zealand could save if we swapped out fossil fuel machines for electric equivalents and ran them off renewable electricity from the grid, rooftop solar and batteries: "It's nice to be able to make the carrot that large because I think it focuses the policy mind on how to get there."

We've filled our electric boots this week with more good news for EV seekers as the upfront costs keep dropping, the EV that has been around the world about 50 times, grid-scale batteries are on the rise and the world's biggest one is equal to about 130 million laptop batteries, restaurants in New Orleans are being given solar panels to help the community out in case of hurricanes, and a spicy electricity-related letter to the editor.

Saul Griffith speaks to Bernard Hickey on When the Facts Change podcast about the new paper Investing in Tomorrow. As it summarises: "Saul Griffith helped change the world a couple of years ago when he and a couple of "tech bro" mates convinced Joe Biden to rewrite the Democrats’ Green New Deal and pitch it as an Inflation Reduction Act to rewire America’s economy with renewable energy. Saul makes a pitch for Aotearoa to do the same, but much cheaper and much faster, instead of the government’s current plan to spend $1 billion importing gas over the next couple of years. He presents Rewiring Aotearoa’s paper on The Electrification Opportunity, which estimates cheaper power costs worth $10.7 billion per year by 2040.