The 'Electric Election': energy policies, side by side
We've heard from plenty of MPs telling us about the electric machines, solar and EVs in our Political Power series. Green MP Kahurangi Carter is also mostly running on electrons, but her set-up is fairly unique. She lives in one of 14 units in the Peterborough Housing Co-op in central Christchurch.
The co-op has been around since the early '80s and it's designed with the community in mind. Think shared spaces, shared gardens, cars on the outside with EV charging available, shared utilities and shared energy.
Carter says the induction cooktop took a while to get used to but it is much better than what's she had previously, both in terms of performance and safety (it's also way easier to clean).
Like a mini version of the district heating schemes sometimes seen overseas, low temperature water is pumped around all the homes and used for underfloor heating, and centralised heat pumps also produce the higher temperature water.
At a time when power bills are a major cause of stress for households, keeping them low by sharing resources is very appealing and during the summer, solar means that the power bill for all the units and a large common space is less than $1000.
The last house Carter lived in was really cold, but this one is very comfortable and the power bills are so much lower, which means there's more money to spend on food or other expenses.
"I want that for everybody ... We need to electrify. It's not a woke thing. It just makes sense ... What we're trying to do is make sure life is affordable, that people have the things they need and we use the technologies available to us, like solar, like electrifying, like hydro, and be really proud of those things."
Living in the central city means biking and public transport are possible, but for many who are reliant on cars, she says EVs are a logical way to escape the volatility of fuel prices and it's important that access is opened up to more New Zealanders.
See the full interview and all our Political Power interviews here.
BloombergNEF says sales of combustion cars peaked in 2017 and there's no coming back, while a new study in New Zealand shows petrol vehicles were losing value more quickly than equivalent models did a decade ago; big batteries aren't just for storing electricity, they can also store heat; the story of the world's biggest electric ferry and the Australian company that made it; electric motorbikes are doing a lot of heavy lifting on emissions reduction, so why don't they get more attention?; and a new show called HallowGreen2 that tackles the energy transition "with music, humour and a hopeful message”.
Read moreDownloadRNZ's Kate Newton looks at why no-one is really talking about emissions as an election issue. As Mike Casey said: "The climate movement up until this point has been very, very good at creating dartboards, but terrible at providing people with darts to play the game." That's allowed for inaction, and active lobbying against climate change action from fossil fuel companies and others who stand to lose out ... The solution is "flipping it into a strong economic narrative that they can't possibly fight with".
Read moreDownloadHumans are comparative creatures and they're particularly comparative during election season. That's why we've created a rundown of all the energy-related election policies that have been announced by the parties so far.
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