Raise the roof

For all those who celebrate, happy Solar Appreciation Day (another great example of the holiday industrial complex in action). 

Locally, Alpine Energy in the South Island marked this auspicious occasion with a post celebrating a 25% increase in solar connections in the district in the last year. That makes a total of 786 connections and 4.2MW of capacity on the network.

“And the future looks even brighter! We're exploring the potential to connect over 50MW of large-scale solar farms in the region – enough to potentially power Tekapo and Twizel on a sunny day.”

New Zealand as a whole clocked in with a 21% growth rate in rooftop solar installs, according to the Electricity Authority. Around 9,000 of those came with a battery. 

While we're all for more large-scale renewable energy, rooftop solar deserves the most appreciation as it's the cheapest form of delivered energy available to New Zealanders. Generation is only around half the cost of electricity, so making it on your roof is the best bet if you want to lower your electricity bills.

Things are looking up

Sticking with solar, a new paper in Nature that used tech to calculate the world’s roofspace and looked at differences in solar potential across regions, has shown that rooftop solar could play a much bigger role in emissions reductions than originally thought. 

“Solar energy is an essential technology for climate change mitigation, showing impressive technological learning curves and large future potential. While often underestimated in climate stabilization models, it could provide the single largest contribution to mitigation in 2050. Rooftop photovoltaic, initially a niche solution, may also offer a global-scale opportunity to reduce fossil fuel reliance.” 

New Zealand is something of an outlier in terms of electricity generation, most of which is renewable. For many countries that burn more fossil fuels to produce electricity, solar is a smart way to create a cleaner grid, but as our latest explainer showed, in New Zealand it is more about providing more (and more affordable) electricity, improving energy security and weaning ourselves of fossil fuels in the wider energy system, particularly for transport. 

Pump up the jam

New Zealanders have taken to heat pumps in their homes like ducks to water. And New Zealand businesses and industries have also been quick on the uptake. As this story in Renew Economy says, New Zealand is something of a poster child for industrial electrification. 

A lot of this stimulus came from Government funding, just as a lot of Australia’s solar boom came from subsidies. That has now largely gone, but the economics of electrification tend to win on their own these days and New Zealand’s gas shortage has also pushed businesses towards more efficient industrial heat pump solutions. 

As the story says: “In a new study into what Australia can learn from its electric-forward cousins across the Tasman, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) says the stats are bearing out the benefits of switching away from gas: between 2019 and 2022 coal use within the food and beverage industry fell by 12 per cent and gas by 21 per cent, and electricity use rose by just 7 per cent. 

High electricity prices remain a concern for businesses after last year’s dry year wholesale price debacle, which is why we’re advocating for a lot more solar on our homes, farms and businesses as that will reduce the price for everyone on the network. 

‍Better with batteries

It’s fair to say Toyota has been a laggard when it comes to releasing electric models and has instead focused on hybrids (some argue it has actively fought against the transition to EVs). But, as this sponsored story in New Zealand Geographic about an electric summer road trip said, “it is one of the most trusted automotive brands in the country and could play an especially important role in the electrification of New Zealand. In Norway, for instance, more than 90 per cent of all new cars sold in January were EVs, and the bZ4X made up more than 10 per cent of all sales.”

In what is a positive sign of momentum on this front from one of the world’s biggest carmakers, Toyota has announced some major updates to the bZ4X to increase its range - which many felt was too low - as well as the arrival of new electric models, the C-HR+ and Urban Cruiser in Europe.

Toyota will continue to grow its BEV range and deliver on its ambition to reveal 6 new BEV models by the end of 2026. Following the example set by the new Urban Cruiser and Toyota C-HR+, these will adopt a traditional naming strategy to make them familiar and instantly recognisable to customers.

At the risk of repeating ourselves, electric cars are a clear win on the economics - especially when charged at home with rooftop solar - and there’s no contest when it comes to emissions, so it’s good to see Toyota finally start to recognise this inevitable shift.

Globally, EV sales continue to rise, with estimates from BloombergNEF that one third of all new car sales will be battery electric by 2026. 

Sphere of influence

The world of energy is changing. And it’s economics that’s largely driving it. This beautifully-made video from Simon Clark featuring a model of the Earth shows how much progress we've made on climate change and how quickly renewables are growing around the world.