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We've been talking about energy for ages at Rewiring, but everyone else seems to be talking about it, too, primarily because price rises are proving to so painful for so many homes and businesses. One way to reduce that pain is by offering long-term, low-interest loans for electric upgrades, something we've been working hard on for a while, and that was the subject of a front page story on The Post. In it, questions were raised about the amount of money being spent on consultants (and some of the advice then being ignored) and whether the Government would back the Ratepayer Assistance Scheme.
Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey featured prominently with the quote: "It's just time to stop spending money on consulting to come up with new ideas ... we really need to start taking action."
Read the full story here (paywalled)⚡
Right now, an average home could save about $1,000 a year, including paying interest on a loan. And there are a lot of other 'positive externalities', as the economists say.
We don't need subsidies to make solar economic, but where subsidies will help is if we want to speed things up, like they've done in Australia. Subsidies will encourage people with money or access to finance to go out and buy solar and batteries, but long-term, low-interest finance is more important because it means more New Zealand households, especially lower-income homes, will be able to access those technologies and save money from day one.
Find out more about the RAS and why it makes so much sense here.
New Zealand has passed the "tipping point" where most people buying solar panels will save more money than they spend on them, researchers say, but more could be done to unlock households' ability to make use of solar power. Josh Ellison, research lead for Rewiring Aotearoa, said the country was one of the first where the electrification of homes and vehicles could deliver cost-of-living savings and reductions in emissions at the same time. He said the tipping point was probably passed about three years ago but has now been crossed for battery storage systems, too.
There can't be too many off-grid MPs in the world, but Celia Wade-Brown is one of them and she's the latest candidate in our ongoing series Political Power, where we get up close and personal with our elected representatives about their energy use.
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