“All I ask New Zealanders to do is to make six good decisions in the next 10 years,” Casey said.
“Which means the next time you buy a machine for your home, whether it’s your car or the way that you heat your water or the way that you cook your food or putting solar panels on the roof… make six good decisions and you’ll go a long way to solving New Zealand’s climate emissions, while at the same time saving a huge amount of money.
“Gross savings for a family that goes through this energy transition fast is about $7000 a year of energy savings, and when you take out the capital cost and the interest cost if you put it on your mortgage, for example, it’s probably about $3000 worth of savings a year.”
Most parties are promising to increase the uptake of solar panels, batteries and portable solar units, with National and Labour promising schemes involving low-interest loans or subsidies.
But a key challenge will be having enough workers to install solar and other forms of electrification, Casey says.
He’s worked across the political spectrum to get consensus to solve that problem.
“It might be surprising to some of the listeners here, but the party that really came to the party on this one was the Act Party. When I had my solar installation installed on my farm, I had to have four different electricians come out from different organisations to make that happen. They’re all qualified with the same thing, and it could have honestly been done by one guy, but due to regulations and red tape and all these kinds of things.
“So really trying to make sure that the workforce that we do have is able to earn more money by being as efficient as possible and doing more jobs is super critical and important.”
He said post-election the key will be to look at ways to scale up tradespeople.
“Right now, I have mums come up to me at events regularly saying there’s no electrical apprenticeships for their children, and at the same time you have solar installers saying we can’t hire enough qualified staff.
“There’s obviously a big hole… and a big inefficiency that needs to be solved.
“The electricians will be the heroes of the hour when it comes to climate. One thing I’ve often said is we asked economists and accountants to solve climate, and all that resulted in was really pine trees and more fossil fuels being burnt.
“It’s the practical trade work that is required for our country that can’t be replaced with something like AI.
“AI could help you make things more efficient, but ultimately we need good men and women installing electrical equipment all over the country in order to revolutionise our economy. And I truly think we’re at the point where we could be very world leading on this. We pay through the nose for foreign energy, more expensive energy than any other country in the OECD, and we are very good at making electricity, which makes us the perfect economic case study on how to do this transition really, really quickly.”
Listen to the full episode to hear more about Mike Casey’s big bold ambitions.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5pm.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.