RNZ<\/a><\/p>\nElectricity Retailers and Generators Association chief executive Bridget Abernethy said wholesale prices were sitting at some of their lowest winter levels in more than a decade.<\/p>\n
She said July wholesale prices were averaging about $75 a megawatt-hour, making it the lowest average July price in more than 10 years.<\/p>\n
Electricity Authority forward price data also shows \u014ct\u0101huhu futures prices for 2027, 2028 and 2029 have fallen by about 30% over the past year.<\/p>\n
Abernethy said the fall was partly due to strong hydro storage but also reflected a bigger shift as more renewable generation and batteries came into the system.<\/p>\n
“We’ve seen a lot of renewable generation come online recently, so there’s been a big upswing in renewable generation build, including batteries,” she said.<\/p>\n
Abernethy said lower prices were a positive signal for businesses looking at switching process heat or upgrading transport fleets.<\/p>\n
“Businesses are not looking for short-term fluctuations, they’re looking for those long, sustained, lower prices – that’s what will give them confidence,” she said.<\/p>\n
Not all businesses could easily electrify, but the best candidates were light transport and low-to-medium temperature process heat, she said.<\/p>\n
That included parts of agriculture, food and beverage, manufacturing, textiles and clothing, where electric heat pumps could meet businesses’ needs and lower costs.<\/p>\n
Abernethy said some well-known businesses were already moving, including Whittaker’s Chocolate and Speight’s Brewery.<\/p>\n
Abernethy said dry-year risk had not disappeared but the electricity system was in a much stronger position than it was in 2024.<\/p>\n
“You can never remove all the risk, but we’ve come a long way since 2024 when the system was facing fuel shortages across multiple sources in one go.”<\/p>\n
She said stable policy settings were now critical to give investors’ confidence to make large, long-term investments in renewable generation.<\/p>\n
“What matters more than anything is stable policy settings that give investors the confidence to make these long-term and very large investments in renewable generation,” she said.<\/p>\n
She said New Zealand Steel’s electric arc furnace would soon account for roughly half of New Zealand’s domestic steel production and reduce NZ Steel’s emissions by more than 45%.<\/p>\n
“I think that speaks to the potential of electricity to power entire industries in New Zealand,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Falling wholesale electricity prices could give some businesses more confidence to switch from fossil fuels to renewable power,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":810071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,2572,75,128],"class_list":["post-810070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}