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Trent Yeo, the founder of Ziptrek Ecotours, is a big supporter of his region's goal to become the world's most electric destination, a vision being brought to life by the Queenstown Electrification Accelerator. And he walks the talk with his own low-impact business and his highly efficient all-electric home.
His relatively small but perfectly formed house, which he says was around 15 years in the making, was built with passive house principles, so it requires much less energy to run than a standard home. It also features efficient electric machines and a sizeable solar and battery system.
That combination adds up to much lower bills (possibly $0 for the whole year as he can export excess energy, and that includes charging two EVs), greater resilience (both from volatile energy prices and natural disasters), and better air quality (which is an important consideration in his often smokey hometown of Arrowtown).
As energy prices continue to rise, more New Zealanders are figuring out that they can do what Trent has done, invest upfront in the right technology, and save thousands every year.
Getting off foreign fossil fuels and embracing locally-made electrons - from the grid and from your own rooftop - is a proven way to reduce costs and reduce emissions. And it's not about sacrifice, it's about substitution.
As he says: "Every day all of us can do better in work and play."
When you live in a 'pocket neighbourhood', it makes sense to run on the sun and embrace electric tech - and that's exactly what the Peterborough Housing Co-op in Christchurch has done. Jim Small, a trustee for the Ōtākaro Land Trust, says the co-op has been around since the early '80s and it's "designed with the community in mind". Think shared spaces, shared gardens, cars on the outside, shared utilities and shared energy.
Read moreDownloadContact's grid-scale battery at Glenbrook is switched on and the Prime Minister talks again about 'energy independence' at the opening; how steel mills and smelters here and overseas are embracing electrons; the electric wave is a massive job creation opportunity (while imported oil does bugger all on that front) and renewable projects are set to keep New South Wales out of recession; batteries have all but displaced gas for peaks in Queensland in just a couple of years, and solar and wind overtake gas for the first time globally; data shows sales of internal combustion cars peaked in 2017 but sales of EVs more than doubled between 2022 -2025; and anyone with a heat pump is making a killing.
Read moreDownloadA proposal to let people install solar panels and other green technology using low-interest loans from their council needs to go ahead "as soon as possible", its proponents say. The government asked Local Government New Zealand to present its business case for the proposed Ratepayer Assistance Scheme (RAS) in late 2025. However, ministers still had not made any decisions about whether to go ahead with the scheme - which would let councils provide long-term loans to any homeowner who wanted to access them. That's despite growing political support from parties across the spectrum.
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