Good, Democratic, Easy-To-Support Energy Policies
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8:43 am, August 11th, 2025 - 16 comments
Categories: climate change, Deep stuff, energy, Environment, infrastructure, telecommunications -
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Basic premise: power to the people
Most of these would have Chamber of Commerce and Major Users Group support, tConsumer NZ would like it, CAFCA would like it, some were already proposed as government policy anyway, and some like offshore wind have some momentum and just need a solid hurry-up for a proper regulatory regime.
A Single Energy Regulator for Empowered Consumers
We need one powerful agency that makes our energy giants quake because right now they don’t give a damn.
There’s formal compliance under the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme, there’s the Electricity Authority, and then there’s the Commerce Commission. And EECA, and MBIE doing gas, etc. Put an exceptionally high monetary premium on loss of energy supply other than from disasters, and ban punitive supply contracts. A guaranteed maximum price for low energy users, just like many water entities do. Publish all generator and lines companies who put their prices up, monthly. Name and shame and encourage consumer shifting and consumer aggregation and power.
A Single Bulk Buyer of Electricity
In 2013 Labour and the Greens committed to forming a single electricity buyer.
That’s pretty similar to Pharmac, and would be a kind of end-run around price regulation. The natural entity to do that job would be Transpower, because they command all the taps for on and off. That’s a very big power to hold and operate. It would make the gentailers shit themselves and their full lobbying force would come to bear. Remember the fight to smash Telecom, and the rise of public fibre optic networks afterwards? That’s how powerful an idea it is.
And once you have that sort of power in public hands, you get to do other stuff like …
A National Energy Strategy
We need a realistic path to security and control of our destiny.
A real strategy showing how fast the whole of society and the economy can actually transition away from coal towards renewables without crashing business, or require heroic public budget subsidies for households like the Winter Fuel Allowance, or big public grants to get major users off coal. We also need a reality check about gas reliance in industry. In the harder basket, ban all non-NZ citizens from owning energy company shares.
Whatever the elements of the strategy, Labour would need to do an even better job than James Shaw to ensure that civil society and business together agreed on the pace of change. Invite National to join.
Form Energy Reserves to Ensure Supply Security
South Australia did it a couple of years ago with a Tesla system.
We probably don’t have time for the Onslow Battery Dam to be built, and who knows where the capital would come from anyway. Whatever the option, get it under construction in one term, let Transpower own and operate it rather than allowing the Big Four to collude. And do it quick before the majority of our cars rely on it.
Tax Benefits for local Generator and Line Company Ownership
A local bill with local company directors that you get to vote on.
Enable Councils to own generators and lines companies again if they want to, so that they are closer to democratic accountability. Include shifting the energy Trusts back to Council ownership including Vector’s $2.5b shareholding to Auckland. Bring back actual democratic control of utilities again.
A New State Company to form Geothermal plants, and Offshore Wind
NZSuper is taking too long for its Taranaki proposal, and iwi often don’t have enough capital to generate new geothermal plants. Form an entity under Transpower to crank this up, and form partnerships.
Most of these would have Chamber of Commerce and Major Users Group support, some were already proposed as government policy anyway, and some like offshore wind just need a solid hurry-up for a proper regulatory regime.
All of them would be worth the fight. There would indeed be a fight.
All of them together would smash the power of the electricity oligarchy and deliver power to the people.
Well Ad, have to say this looks pretty damn good ! Is there anyone from the Powers that be (in waiting of course) that reads this?
Being proactive, I have previously contacted Megan Woods on Power, Energy etc etc…no reply. Nada. Not even from her office…
The Greens have been more forthcoming and actually replied.
To state the obvious…they need to start looking and listening.
I forgot to mention the bleeding obvious for the election:
Commit to 100% government ownership of Transpower, and commit to not selling the 51% shareholding in Genesis, Mercury, and Meridian.
The more obvious you point out…the more obvious it is.
(and so should be !)
Why not go the whole hog and also expand that 51% to 75%, and build a 25% stake in Contact. Could be done slowly through super / Cullen funds, or a special entity.
Although whatever a future left government does to create a secure energy policy something will need to be done to allow a shareholder (in this case Government) to be able to act in the Country’s interest, and not be forced to act only in the company’s interest.
Can see a lot of what you are proposing ending up in the High Court, and higher, pdq without some changes to the Companies Act. A provision for Strategic Entities might be required, could include water and roading companies, and maybe some telecos, in there too.
I honestly can't see the benefit of investing further in the 3 main electricity companies. It wouldn't make power any cheaper.
The big driver in recent increased power bills is in how lines and transmission charges go up. These are already regulated by the Commerce Commission, but proposing these changes and analysing them and then challenging them is such a specialist sport that it's even harder than airlines challenging the landing charges of our airports. No airline has ever successfully challenged an airport here on those.
I do think we need a specialist commercial High Court with judges who actually specialise in administrative and regulatory law – as a back stop to a single electricity and transmission market regulator.
The assets that need to be nationalised that is (largely) held by the 3 main electricity companies are the hydro schemes.
Demand management has a big potential role as well if we consider demand management = everything you do on the consumer side of the meter. More houses with solar and batteries (a form of demand management) reduces the demand for power from generators. Sure it might be strictly an inefficient way of providing electricity by one measure, but that doesn't account for increased resilience and the avoided cost of new large generators.
Another bleeding obvious omission :
A New State Company to form Geothermal plants, Solar grid-scale plants and Offshore Wind.
Let's Have a Hmmm.
No more Fast Forward laws for any of them. Communities must be given back their rights to object.
I didn't say I supported fast-tracking anything. Just that the new State Company should also support/encourage/finance today's cheapest source of renewable power-solar.
I think fast-tracking is a disaster; it should be abandoned immediately, and lets return to the sensible rules in the RMA and District Plans developed over generations.
Aye BG, that could cover Sustainability, Manufacturing, Tech, Innovation ,Regain our Climate standing… and Employment (I might have missed some : )
Please don't make it democratically controlled. Voters are the reason we have the system we have now.
No one voted for the Max Bradford reforms.
When people get an idea of how democracy works again, you will see more people vote all over. Trust the people.
The Bradford reforms were about taking a working public utility and smashing it up for ticket clipping entities that hide behind their rulesets.
Clearly failed with generators taking the piss paying excessive dividends whilst owning the retailers.
Nice work if you can get it while lines companies pay rebates to power account holders rather than address their maintenance backlog for preventative outages etc
Add in making solar panels compulsory on all appropriate new builds, including apartments.
https://www.google.com/search?q=germany+solar+panels+balcony&rlz=1C9BKJA_enNZ662NZ664&oq=germany+solar+panels+balconies&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCAgBEAAYFhgeMgYIABBFGDkyCAgBEAAYFhgeMggIAhAAGBYYHjINCAMQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAQQABiGAxiABBiKBTIHCAUQIRigATIKCAYQABiABBiiBNIBCTE2MzgzajBqOagCALACAeIDBBgBIF8&hl=en-GB&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#vhid=dYwtrN_3K72taM&vssid=l
Retro fit solar panels onto all school rooves.
Offer rebates on all residential homes that add solar panels.
+100 Stephen
A Newsroom Opinion piece on our NZ Power problems, by Edward Miller, also contains many interesting and useful Links. Some well known? Some not?