The case for energy loans: read our latest explainer
The IEA's EV outlook shows another big bump in global sales; research shows what to focus on if you want to promote EVs (even to the sceptics); New Zealand solar uptake has spiked but is still a long way behind other markets; the price of renewables continues to fall faster than governments predict; the company improving induction (and trying to sneak batteries into homes in appliances); and the companies recycling batteries to get the minerals we need for the electric transition (at lower cost than 'virgin' mining).
Rolling on
The International Energy Agency has released its latest EV outlook and the numbers continue to rise rapidly.
Sales are on track to make up more than a quarter of global car sales in 2025, with China and Europe leading the charge and developing markets growing quickly. It’s expected they will pass a 40% share by 2030.
Denmark is also racing ahead with its EV numbers, with two thirds of new cars sold in February battery electric, second only to Norway and just ahead of Sweden.
When it comes to convincing people to get an EV, there are big differences across the political spectrum but some areas where there is more in common, as this survey of US voters from Potential Energy shows.
In New Zealand, we can also add ‘it’s a lot cheaper’ to that list because our fossil fuels are so much more expensive than in the US. And while our sales growth is slow, in large part because of a lack of policy incentives, more New Zealanders than ever are recognising those benefits and there have never been as many EVs on our roads.
A beautiful sunrise
Speaking of upward trends, solar continues its rapid rise around the world. Energy experts Ember have put together a compilation of countries and while New Zealand’s line is one of the steepest, the numbers are extremely low in comparison to most other markets. Just like the EV numbers, there’s plenty of catching up to do.
Behind the curve
One of the main reasons for the upward trend is the downward trend below.
A paper from the energy journal Joule shows clearly the steadily declining costs of solar and wind. It’s not magic; it’s economies of scale and learning rates. But what it also shows is that governments keep underestimating and underforecasting how quickly renewables drop in price, and are therefore thinking everything is more expensive than it really is, and then going slower because they are inaccurately looking at the data.
It’s a good lesson for our own Government and various organisations that advise it to keep updating the actual price of batteries, solar and EVs for modelling because, in many cases, the numbers are way off and that leads to bad decisions being made.
Now we’re cookin’
There are so many benefits to induction cooking, from the speed to the temperature control to the easier clean up to the lack of heat to the significantly reduced risk of cancer in kids. But one San Francisco company Impulse Labs isn’t satisfied with that list and is making induction even better.
Founder Sam D’Amico is developing an even more controllable cooktop, as this video from Ashlee Vance shows, and while other induction stoves come with batteries to give the power supply a boost and reduce the need for upgrades, this is more of a trojan horse approach to get more smaller batteries into homes via appliances.
Given there are so many appliances purchased every year (and comparatively few home batteries), it’s an interesting thought when it comes to creating a more resilient grid - and when you add to the rise of big batteries on wheels that will soon plug in to our homes, we may start to get the kind of dispersed storage we need for the intermittent renewables.
What’s old is new again
Replacing all our fossil fuel machines with electric equivalents will obviously require a lot of materials, but it's important to put that into context and compare it to the amount of stuff we currently burn in our fossil fuel world.
As we wrote in a previous 'Watt Now?' explainer, "in two-and-a-half decades, the global energy transition will require fewer materials by weight than we already mine for coal in a single year".
Unlike fossil fuels, many of these materials are also highly recyclable and reusable, which offers us an opportunity to develop a much more circular economy.
RNZ interviewed UK company Altilium's finance director Sean Joseph, which aims to recycle all of the country’s EV batteries and says they can do it 20% less than virgin mining.
JB Straubel, the founder of US battery recycling company Redwood Materials (and early Tesla employee), says it’s a very different mindset to the hydrocarbon economy.
"We're not consuming them. We're basically building a strategic stockpile of them."
New Zealand company Mint Innovation is also getting in on these economic incentives and Phoenix Metalman claims to be able to recycle over 90% of the materials in solar panels.
Around 90% of an EV battery's minerals can be recycled and by 2050, more than half of the demand for materials like cobalt, graphite, and lithium could be met by recycled secondary supply. Others expect this to occur even earlier.
In the last Electric Avenue of 2025, we look at the two biggest trends in the world of energy; the Government goes electric for its fancy fleet upgrade; Nick Offerman offers his services to a US campaign extolling the virtues of EVs; Australia shows what's possible in new homes when you add solar, batteries and smart tech; a start-up selling portable solar and battery systems that wants it to be as easy and common as wi-fi; and The Lines Company looks to put some solar on the roof of the Ōtorohanga Kiwi House.
Read moreDownloadWhen it comes to electric farming, "the numbers are becoming undeniable," says Nicholson Poultry's Jeff Collings. With 60kW of solar, a Nissan Leaf as a 'farm quad', electric mowers, an electric ute that can run a water blaster, and even a chicken manure scraper made out of a wrecked Tesla that, as Rewiring's Matt Newman says, looks a bit like something out of Mad Max, "almost everything is electric". There aren't many others in New Zealand who have gone this far down the electric road. And, with his electric Stark Varg, the fastest off-road motorbike in the world, he's obviously having plenty of fun on that road, too.
Read moreDownloadRNZ's Kate Newton reports on the "madness" of thousands of new piped gas connections being installed into houses every year, despite dwindling supplies and higher lifetime costs.
Casey said it was positive that the numbers showed people starting to leave the gas network of their own accord, but not all households were in a position to make that choice.
"If we don't plan for a decommissioning of the gas network, then it's going to be a chaotic transition, where vulnerable New Zealanders really suffer."
As the research of Rewiring and others has shown, gas is expensive, it's getting more expensive, it's terrible for your health when burned inside and there are substitutes available right now that, on average, do the same job for less money over the long run for households, would save the country billions on health costs and lost productivity, and don't pump out unnecessary emissions.
Around 300,000 homes and businesses have connections to the gas network (it’s estimated another 300,000 use more expensive bottled gas, mostly in the South Island). The number of active connections has started to decline recently and the country’s largest gas network, Vector, is forecasting no new residential or commercial connections after 2029.
Upfront capital costs are the main barrier for many homes, which is why we're working hard on a low-interest, long-term loan scheme that can be used to pay for electric upgrades, including hot water heat pumps. This would mean paying for a new thing with a loan would be cheaper than paying to run the old thing.
Read more about the scheme here.
Disconnection costs are also a major barrier. We have seen examples where households permanently disconnecting from the network have been charged between $1,000 and $2,000 to have a meter permanently removed (i.e. digging up the pipes to the road), even though it should only cost customers $200 to have the connection capped at the house.
RNZ even reported a case where a business customer was quoted $7,500 but took the case to Utilities Disputes, where complaints about disconnection costs have been rising.
The Australian Energy Regulator and the state of Victoria have now capped the disconnection fees to a few hundred dollars to stop this kind of behaviour and protect households.