The case for energy loans: read our latest explainer
New Zealand's emissions have fallen for the past three years. That's positive, but Rohan MacMahon, a Partner and Co-founder of the Climate Venture Capital Fund, believes we need to push harder and fully embrace electrification.
As he writes in a blog post about the Second Emissions Reduction Plan:
Beyond forestry, Aotearoa has opportunities for gross emissions reductions which we feel have been underplayed. Our renewable electricity potential is looking increasingly like a huge advantage for us. New Zealand is blessed with a mostly clean electricity grid. This makes faster electrification of fossil fuel-based energy and transport a massive opportunity for emissions reduction. Getting this right means changing electricity market settings to promote renewable builds. That should include specifically acknowledging the role that households can play in electricity generation via rooftop solar, and support the rollout of rooftop solar and batteries in communities.
To fit with that, the Government should note that increased densification of housing would directly reduce transport emissions, make public transport more economically viable and reduce the environmental and social costs of urban sprawl.
The Government’s “Electrify NZ” plan is a reasonable start to the task of mass electrification, but is not sufficiently ambitious. Remembering that we only have to decarbonise once, why not get on with the task rather than delaying it, when this is sure to lead to greater costs and higher community impact?
Demand side electrification involves supporting people to swap fossil fuel machines like gas heaters, gas cooktops and internal combustion vehicles for electric alternatives. It also involves supporting people to get rooftop solar & batteries. There’s a simple win to reduce fossil fuel use and dependence upon declining gas supplies – the Government should also simply ban gas connections in new home builds. Heat pumps & induction cooktops are zero-emissions, faster, more efficient, and safer. It is a bad decision for both climate and cost of living to lock in new family homes into paying for 20-30 years of expensive, increasing gas prices.
These initiatives can produce a more resilient energy system, significantly lowering emissions and also addressing the cost of living – a “win/ win/ win”.
As Rewiring Aotearoa notes, New Zealand is one of the first countries to reach the ‘electrification tipping point’ where households can save money while significantly reducing their emissions by electrifying their appliances and vehicles. Electrification is thus an opportunity to improve our lives in a number of different ways, at a household level.
Accordingly, it is disappointing to note that ERP2 has very little focus on households. There is little recognition of the role which residential energy customers could play in reducing emissions, lowering costs and creating a more resilient system.
Read MacMahon's full blog post here.
Rewiring Aotearoa's ERP2 submission laid out our argument for more work to be done on the plan and for household decisions to be viewed as a much larger emissions reduction opportunity.
Everyone is rocking on down to Electric Avenue today (this one online, not that other small one in Hagley Park in Christchurch), so let's ride the lightning: profits and electricity prices keep going up, as panels keep going down; a new paper puts a number on how much more homes with solar sell for; we're bottling things up with big and small batteries and they are eating into gas in Australia and California; transport emissions drop across the Tasman as a result of Government EV incentives, while HEB Construction electrifies its fleet; electrons are coming from above in China; and Xpeng announces the arrival of a crazy looking electric van/aircraft carrier.
Read moreDownloadWarren G and Nate Dogg said it best when they said: 'Regulators, mount up!' - and this week, they have.In a rare joint open letter, three different regulators - EECA (Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority), the Commerce Commission and the Electricity Authority - have basically told the lines companies to pull their socks up and make the most of ‘non-network solutions’ (AKA stop building more expensive poles and wires and start looking at customers and new technology as part of the solution!).
Read moreDownload"The LNG announcement from earlier this month has set the stage: electricity, and the energy sector more broadly, is set to be a major election issue this year. Casey has compared electricity to telecommunications, an area where services have become much cheaper in the last decade with technology advancing. “There are supply challenges for the grid and natural gas, and increasing pressure to find sustainable alternatives as reliance on fossil fuels becomes less viable,” he wrote in a Newsroom piece earlier this month, heralding the “electric election”.
Read moreDownload