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Rewiring Aotearoa supports the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority’s (EECA) levy funding proposal for 2026/27, as we see significant benefits for electricity consumers and New Zealand’s productivity from EECA’s workstreams. This is evidenced through EECA’s performance where it has met or exceeded targeted measures, which include cost and energy savings, efficiency investment and other metrics that demonstrate the value EECA’s programmes provide.
Rewiring Aotearoa is an independent non-partisan non-profit, funded by New Zealand philanthropy. It is a registered charity working on energy, climate, and electrification research, advocacy, and supporting communities through the energy transition. The team consists of New Zealand energy, policy, and community outreach experts who have demonstrated experience both locally and internationally. We’re always fighting for the New Zealanders who use the energy system, and our goal is to help build a low cost, low emissions, high resilience electrified economy for Aotearoa NZ.
Rewiring Aotearoa supports the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority’s (EECA) levy funding proposal for 2026/27, as we see significant benefits for electricity consumers and New Zealand’s productivity from EECA’s workstreams. This is evidenced through EECA’s performance where it has met or exceeded targeted measures, which include cost and energy savings, efficiency investment and other metrics that demonstrate the value EECA’s programmes provide.
EECA’s ongoing evidence and data workstreams create value through informing and improving strategic energy policy and regulatory decision making. EECA’s recent research identified up to 1,800 MW of demand across New Zealand (around 25% of total demand) could be shifted away from peak times with the potential to save New Zealand up to $3 billion.
EECA plays a key role to support consumer choices that unlock value from demand side energy technology (eg: smart energy devices, rooftop solar, batteries and electric vehicles as mobile batteries) that can lower energy bills, and improve productivity, energy security and resilience. EECA’s energy demand side and efficiency workstreams are becoming increasingly important as the benefits and the role of demand side energy technology grows.
A recent example of this is EECA’s Solar on Farms demonstration funding and Information hub. The demonstration funding was highly popular with hundreds of farms interested and many more utilising the Information Hub. Stimulating uptake of solar and battery investment on farms is a win-win for the farmer and the local community. It can reduce energy bills for the farmer and provide valuable resilience benefits for the community when solar is paired with batteries, with the potential to offset network investment and lower energy bills for the whole community. Distributed batteries and solar on farms provide the potential to support a network of rural EV charging sites helping to expand access to public EV charging into low use parts of the country.
We are far from the end of the energy transition with a lot more to be done and EECA can deliver significant additional value to households and businesses through being appropriately resourced. This does not just apply to stationary energy, there is a continued need for EECA to play a role in transport both from managing low emissions transport funds and supporting the transition of the New Zealand fleet to electric vehicles especially heavy freight and light commercial vehicles.
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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