'This car can...' Check out our new campaign
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.
There are a lot more New Zealanders looking for EVs right now as concerns about the price and availability of fuel rises. But many of them are new to the scene. Here are some things to consider to ensure you get the right EV for your needs.
Read moreDownloadThere’s a lot of talk about what electric vehicles can’t do and plenty of myths and misperceptions that might stop people from upgrading. But the people who actually own EVs? They’re overwhelmingly sold and recent research showed that 96% of EV owners would buy another one. That's why we're launching 'This Car Can...' We want to tap into that electric enthusiasm and convince more New Zealanders who may be on the fence to start running on cheap local electrons rather than on expensive imported foreign molecules.
EV owners love all the things their cars can do - and they can do a lot of different things these days. So we're asking them to share a story about their EV experience, upload a photo and tell us what their car can do, or send in a video.
We'll add them to the campaign page and we'll use the best ones on socials and in our advocacy to show how lots of different New Zealanders are benefitting from EVs in their lives.
We've also compiled a whole heap of information on why we love EVs - from the savings to the speed off the mark and everything inbetween.
Get in behind!