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With electricity prices on the up, The Spinoff harks back to Mike Casey's opinion piece in Newsroom introducing the idea of the 'electric election' and the need to get behind rooftop solar to help New Zealanders reduce their energy costs.
The fuel crisis has given new force to the arguments of electricity advocates. With petrol prices at record highs and the LNG terminal – the government’s centrepiece response to dry-year risk – now in jeopardy after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz sent LNG prices soaring, the case for rooftop solar has sharpened considerably. For proponents, the combination of an EV and solar power offers a way to decouple from both a captive electricity market and a fossil fuel economy that are simultaneously failing consumers.
Writing in Newsroom, Rewiring Aotearoa’s Mike Casey argues that the gentailers, for all their public commitments to customers, “still fight behind the scenes to maintain their advantage and keep bills high.” He is equally pointed about the government: it “should be looking out for the customer” but is also “the largest shareholder of the existing system”, creating an ongoing structural conflict. The government needs to wrestle away some of the industry’s power and “help New Zealanders take control of their own energy destiny” by throwing its support behind solar, he says.
“Anyone who keeps the price of electricity high for New Zealanders is going against our national interests”, he writes. “So fasten your seatbelt. This electric election is going to be a wild ride.”
New Zealand has passed the "tipping point" where most people buying solar panels will save more money than they spend on them, researchers say, but more could be done to unlock households' ability to make use of solar power. Josh Ellison, research lead for Rewiring Aotearoa, said the country was one of the first where the electrification of homes and vehicles could deliver cost-of-living savings and reductions in emissions at the same time. He said the tipping point was probably passed about three years ago but has now been crossed for battery storage systems, too.
There can't be too many off-grid MPs in the world, but Celia Wade-Brown is one of them and she's the latest candidate in our ongoing series Political Power, where we get up close and personal with our elected representatives about their energy use.
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