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Queenstown-Lakes landlords are being sought for a New Zealand-first pilot programme. The Queenstown Electrification Accelerator (QEA) is about to kick in to a solar trial, aimed at ensuring residential and commercial renters can benefit from solar power, despite not owning the roof.
QEA business electrification lead Lowri Swygart says, till now, there hasn’t been a straightforward way to ensure the energy transition is inclusive of residential rental properties, for example.
‘‘As part of the Queenstown Electrification Accelerator . . . [we] realised this is a topic that came up time and time again, so we thought we’d put together a trial with a couple of different options of how we can help people through the process, then work out what are the barriers, if we’ve got solutions in place, and how can we make it as easy as possible for renters to have access to low-cost solar energy.’’
Swygart says about 60 people have already registered their interest in participating in the trial— the majority of those residential landlords.
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."