It says \u2018Kiwipower\u2019 would solve our current affordability and supply problems, writes Henry Oliver in today\u2019s excerpt from The Bulletin.<\/p>\n
To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday,\u00a0sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Green Party launched its energy policy yesterday, centred on a new publicly owned Crown entity called \u2018Kiwipower\u2019. Co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick announced the policy at Dunedin\u2019s Gasworks Museum, with Swarbrick\u00a0quoted by the Herald\u2019s Ben Tomsett<\/a>\u00a0as saying: \u201cGas belongs in a museum. But Luxon\u2019s Government wants to lock us into 15 more years of imported fossil fuels and higher prices with their expensive LNG terminal. That is a choice \u2013 and it is the wrong one.\u201d<\/p>\n Kiwipower would require $980m in funding, part of a wider energy package (more on that below)\u00a0\u00a0costed at around $3.1bn over four years, including $2.1bn in operating expenditure and just over $1bn in capital spending, all funded through the Greens\u2019 proposed \u2018super-rich tax\u2019 and the reallocation of fossil fuel subsidies.<\/p>\n What Kiwipower would actually do<\/p>\n Kiwipower\u2019s core purpose is to address what the Greens \u2013 which claims it is backed by OECD, Infrastructure Commission and Frontier Economics analysis \u2013 say is an undersupply of \u2018firming\u2019 capacity: the backup generation needed to keep the lights on when hydro lakes are low, wind drops, or demand peaks.\u00a0<\/p>\n BusinessDesk\u2019s Ian Llewellyn reported<\/a>\u00a0that Kiwipower would do this in two ways: first, by investing directly in new firming resources including geothermal, batteries, biomass, demand response and pumped hydro; and second, by contracting existing hydro and thermal capacity from the major gentailers and making it available to independent generators, retailers and energy users at transparent, fair prices.\u00a0<\/p>\n The four major companies \u2013 Meridian, Contact, Mercury and Genesis, which together control more than 85% of both generation and retail markets \u2013 would be required to provide a portion of their firming capacity to Kiwipower. BusinessDesk noted the policy leaves key design questions unresolved, including how much capacity would be required, how prices would be set, whether allocation would be regulated or compulsory, and how Kiwipower would interact with Transpower and the Electricity Authority.<\/p>\n The broader package<\/p>\n Beyond Kiwipower, the NZ Herald reported that the policy includes zero-interest, property-linked clean energy loans for homeowners to install solar and batteries; a \u201crenters\u2019 right to solar\u201d legalising plug-in solar systems; regulation of solar export prices; a $970m expansion of\u00a0Warmer Kiwi Homes<\/a>\u00a0covering insulation, ventilation, hot-water heat pumps and the replacement of gas heating and stoves; a $200m community energy fund for schools, marae, libraries and iwi; and $460m to put solar on 40,000 public homes within four years, including an $80m M\u0101ori housing renewable energy fund.<\/p>\n