Read our new Electric Homes and Vehicles report
What Mike Casey argued for so coherently and passionately this morning on Q+A with Jack Tame isn't pie in the sky stuff. The electrification opportunity is there to be grasped.
Electrification stacks up economically for homes, most businesses and the country as a whole and, as we keep saying, solar, EVs, batteries, heat pumps and renewables are not woke, they just work. We just need to get past the culture war crap and help more New Zealanders deal with the cost of living crisis.
More electric machines running on New Zealand-made energy will also reduce our reliance on imported fuel and make our existing stocks go further for the machines that need it.
And, massive added bonus in case anyone has forgotten what's happening with the weather, there's no contest when it comes to emissions.
Right now, we're dealing with a crisis and we hope it doesn't come down to rationing. But we also need to learn from this and plan for the next one. We need to keep thinking big and building more cheap solar, wind and geothermal. But we also need to think small and electrify as many of our ten million fossil fuel machines as possible.
That's the bit that often gets overlooked but, as Casey said, a lot of a little is a lot. So, to all those politicians thinking about how to get the votes in the 'electric election', let's make New Zealand-made energy our North Star, let's run more electric machines on that energy and let's and do everything we can to create the world's most electric economy.
When Mike Casey bought his house near Cromwell, it came with gas bottles on the side of the home for water and an expensive diesel system for the underfloor heating. He replaced both of them with a Steibel Eltron system and it's been saving him money ever since. As technical manager Bhawesh Singh told him at the Electrify Queenstown conference, there has been a big influx in enquiries from homes looking to get off the molecules and onto electrons.
Read moreDownloadConfidence that cutting regulations to make solar power more accessible - won't jeopardise people's safety. A new Regulation Ministry reports laid out a potential blueprint to legalise plug-in solar and reduce the time and cost of panel installation. Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey shares his thoughts with Andrew Dickens.
The burgeoning demand for solar was also a chance to address a mismatch between the numbers of training opportunities available and young people searching for work, Casey said. "The mums of New Zealand are telling me that there's not enough apprenticeships for their kids and the solar installers of New Zealand are telling me there's not enough trained people."
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