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Newsroom's Marc Daalder looks into a Gas Industry Company report about the costs of switching to electricity and speaks with Rewiring Aoteaora CEO Mike Casey and others about the 'war of words'.
When it comes to figuring out the costs of moving away from gas, who do you trust?
You could choose to trust the gas industry, which obviously wants to keep New Zealanders high on its supply.
Or you could choose to trust New Zealand households that have chosen to tell an independent organisation working hard to reduce customer energy bills and emissions how much money they’re saving by transitioning to fully electric homes.
Last week, the Gas Industry Company (GIC) released a report on the costs of switching to electricity. Our response was that it was misleading, it made incorrect efficiency comparisons, it used unrealistic assumptions for the uptake of technology like hot water heat pumps, and it completely failed to take account of solar and batteries.
As Casey said: “If you’re very pessimistic about the adoption of solar and batteries and hot water heat pumps, then you could probably draw a similar conclusion to what they’ve drawn. But when you look overseas and see what’s happening in Australia, I think there’s a degree of inevitability around large-scale adoption of efficient electric machines and the ability for us to generate and store electricity ourselves.”
We also questioned the disconnection costs the gas industry was quoting.
“This idea that it costs $2000 to disconnect gas – we know for a fact that it doesn’t take that. It takes probably a couple of hundred dollars. The gas industry wants to quote that price because it adds to the cost of moving off gas which of course makes their numbers look way better.”
The GIC is marking its own homework and cherrypicking numbers here. New Zealand homeowners - and decision makers - should be sprinkling these findings with plenty of salt.
Financial commentator Frances Cook uses her own story to show that that an investment in solar and an EV significantly outperforms the stock market and fellow number cruncher Nadine Higgins says that if you do it right, EVs are cheaper to run and own; EV sales have climbed to their highest level since 2022 and are closing in on 2023's numbers and Go Rentals has just invested $2.3 million in some new Tesla Model Y Premiums; the gap between energy costs of diesel vans and utes and electric vans and utes is absolutely massive; solar is also going off right now, with one installer in Otago 448% above their sales target in March; Lightforce has gone back to the Barretts with a new TV ad; Wellington mayor Andrew Little explains its electrification strategy and Hutt City Council shares data showing how its fleet has gone from dirty Toyotas to cleaner EVs; Shenzen in China has electrified its public transport and taxis and that's come with big benefits - and some challenges; and a very simple illustration of the LNG terminal.
Read moreDownloadAs Minister of energy, climate and local government, Simon Watts had a great opportunity to push the country towards cheaper, cleaner and more reliable New Zealand-made energy. And that’s why we laid down a challenge and gave him the ‘MegaWatts’ moniker last year. Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey says he did some good things, like enabling more solar on farms, removing tax on solar exports, fixing onerous solar consenting requirements, putting pressure on the lines companies to pull up their socks, and getting the ball rolling on the Ratepayer Assistance Scheme. "But the LNG import terminal appears to have been a defining issue."
Read moreDownloadAfter ‘crunching the numbers’ and adding in new sources of ‘New Zealand-made energy’ to our equations, CEO Mike Casey has announced that Rewiring Aotearoa will be changing its name to Refuelling Aotearoa. There has been a huge amount of independently verified research showing electrification beats fossil fuels on economics, efficiency, emissions and energy security and that there is a huge opportunity for New Zealand to electrify, but the discovery of an infinite supply of snake oil in New Zealand has changed everything, he says.
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