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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.
Electric homes and EVs show their worth once again by providing resilience during the recent storms; savvy landlords are installing solar and upgrading gas to electricity to help tenants - and themselves; Basis founder Danny Purcell shares some impressive numbers from his smart panel experimentation; Uber goes from green to electric as it pushes for a zero-emissions mobility platform; Air New Zealand's electric plane and airports investing in solar; and 'transcendent mobility' from Rivian's e-bike spinoff.
Read moreDownloadThe Heat Pump Suppliers Association (HPSA) has responded to Castalia's 'Switching off the gas distribution network: Consumer, network, and emissions impacts' for the Gas Industry Co and its conclusions are similar to those of Rewiring Aotearoa's.
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