The Green Party has unveiled plans for a new publicly owned electricity company, with a proposed $980 million four-year appropriation, as part of an election policy aimed at cutting power bills and expanding renewable energy.<\/p>\n
The party launched its energy policy at Dunedin\u2019s Gasworks Museum today, with co-leader Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick announcing plans to establish Kiwipower, a publicly owned Crown entity that would invest in renewable generation and electricity security.<\/p>\n
The party says the $980m appropriation would be funded through its proposed tax on the super-rich.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Greens will lower bills, cut emissions and put power back in the hands of New Zealanders,\u201d Swarbrick said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat means warmer Kiwi homes, community-owned power, solar on rooftops and a new generation company, designed to solve our dry-year problem, owned by New Zealanders: Kiwipower.\u201d<\/p>\n
The policy includes zero-interest clean energy loans for households installing solar panels and batteries, a \u201crenters\u2019 right to solar\u201d and plans to legalise plug-in solar systems.<\/p>\n
The Greens say a fully electric home with solar panels could save up to $1000 a year on power bills, including the cost of paying off the solar system.<\/p>\n
The party says plug-in solar systems could save renters up to $350 a year.<\/p>\n
The party is also promising $200m for community-owned renewable energy projects and says solar panels would be installed on more than half of public homes within four years.<\/p>\n
The policy says that would include around 40,000 public homes, with solar also rolled out across hundreds of M\u0101ori housing projects through an $80m renewable energy fund.<\/p>\n
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson said the plan would allow communities to share in the benefits of renewable energy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will invest $200 million in community-owned renewable energy, solar on your local school, marae, papak\u0101inga or library, with the benefits flowing back to your community,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The Greens also announced an $80m investment in renewable energy for M\u0101ori housing, saying tangata whenua (M\u0101ori) were more likely to experience energy hardship.<\/p>\n
Swarbrick said the current electricity market was failing households, with four major electricity companies controlling most of the retail market.<\/p>\n
\u201c200,000 households are unable to afford to heat their homes, while four big power companies control over 85% of the market and rake in massive profits,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The party identifies Meridian, Genesis, Mercury and Contact as the four major electricity companies and says they control more than 85% of both the generation and retail markets.<\/p>\n
The party\u2019s announcement comes as the Government considers options for securing electricity supply during dry years, including the potential use of imported liquefied natural gas (LNG).<\/p>\n
Swarbrick criticised that approach, saying it would lock New Zealand into fossil fuels.<\/p>\n
\u201cGas belongs in a museum,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut [Prime Minister Christopher] 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
The Green Party says Kiwipower would focus on renewable \u201cfirming\u201d capacity, including geothermal, batteries, demand response, biomass and pumped hydro, to provide back-up when hydro lakes are low or wind generation drops.<\/p>\n
The policy proposes Kiwipower would also contract existing back-up capacity from electricity companies and make it available to independent generators, retailers and energy users at \u201cfair, affordable and transparent prices\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Greens said the policy would be funded through changes to tax settings, including making corporations and wealthy New Zealanders \u201cpay their fair share\u201d.<\/p>\n
The party\u2019s costings estimate the wider energy package would involve about $2.1 billion in operating expenditure and about $1b in capital spending through to 2031.<\/p>\n
Ben Tomsett is a journalist based in Dunedin. He joined the Herald in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Green Party has unveiled plans for a new publicly owned electricity company, with a proposed $980 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[187244,1686,1667,273,264869,111,139,69,135,264870,147],"class_list":["post-537929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-2026election","tag-electricity","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-greenparty","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-politics","tag-renewableelectricity","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}