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The conflict in Iran and resulting energy crisis marks a permanent shift for New Zealand’s reliance on imported fossil fuels, an electrification advocate says.
Kiwibank Sustainable Business Leader of the Year 2026 and chief executive of Rewiring Aotearoa Mike Casey tells Q+A New Zealanders’ interest in electric alternatives have soared in the past few weeks as the price of fuel continues to ratchet up.
Last week was the biggest week for electric vehicle sales since the week before the Clean Car Discount was scrapped in 2023.
Down on Casey’s fully-electric cherry orchard in Central Otago, his neighbour has been talking about borrowing his electric tractor if the diesel price continues to rise.
“I think more and more New Zealanders are starting to realise the future of everything is in New Zealand-made energy,” he said.
Casey said New Zealand is home to 10 million machines that are reliant on imported fossil fuels, and not all of them are ready to make the change to electricity.
As Minister of energy, climate and local government, Simon Watts had a great opportunity to push the country towards cheaper, cleaner and more reliable New Zealand-made energy. And that’s why we laid down a challenge and gave him the ‘MegaWatts’ moniker last year. Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey says he did some good things, like enabling more solar on farms, removing tax on solar exports, fixing onerous solar consenting requirements, putting pressure on the lines companies to pull up their socks, and getting the ball rolling on the Ratepayer Assistance Scheme. "But the LNG import terminal appears to have been a defining issue."
Read moreDownloadAfter ‘crunching the numbers’ and adding in new sources of ‘New Zealand-made energy’ to our equations, CEO Mike Casey has announced that Rewiring Aotearoa will be changing its name to Refuelling Aotearoa. There has been a huge amount of independently verified research showing electrification beats fossil fuels on economics, efficiency, emissions and energy security and that there is a huge opportunity for New Zealand to electrify, but the discovery of an infinite supply of snake oil in New Zealand has changed everything, he says.
Read moreDownload"We’ve got fuel prices climbing towards four dollars a litre. We’ve got global instability, supply lines under pressure, and once again New Zealand is sitting here — exposed. But what’s different this time…it’s the reaction."