Abundant electricity will ease cost of living

ACT will open electricity networks to competition, give New Zealanders more freedom to generate and sell power, and make monopoly lines companies prove consumers are getting value before loading more costs onto their power bills, says ACT spokesperson for Energy and Resources Simon Court.

“New Zealand became a prosperous country in part because we were blessed with abundant energy. But you cannot maintain a first-world standard of living without reliable, affordable power. When energy becomes scarce and expensive, households feel it in their power bills, businesses face higher costs, investment becomes harder, and ultimately New Zealanders’ standard of living suffers.

“The answer is not for politicians to go looking for successful businesses to blame or promising to pull the electricity market apart. We’ve seen that before with the oil and gas ban. We need to make it easier for people to invest, generate more electricity, build the networks needed to move it, and compete for customers. That is how New Zealand gets abundant electricity and lower costs.

“ACT has already reopened New Zealand to energy investment. We scrapped Labour’s oil and gas ban and are reforming the Resource Management Act so new generation and infrastructure can get built. Affordable electricity comes from welcoming investment and making it easier to produce and move more energy around the country.

“Generating more electricity is the first challenge. It also must reach the New Zealanders who need it at a reasonable cost.

“New Zealand needs stronger networks to support population growth, electrification and new generation. New Zealand needs to build the infrastructure that we need while using competition, technology and transparency to stop unnecessary costs becoming permanently embedded in household power bills.

ACT’s energy policy will:

1.0 Encourage investment and innovation: High power prices come from a supply shortage and requires more generation, more investment, and more competition. ACT won’t tear up the industry just to find a scapegoat. ACT will put competition and fair access first and strengthen enforcement where electricity companies misuse market power to block a better deal for consumers.

2.0 Let people sell the power they make: If a household generates its own power, it should be free to sell the surplus to whoever offers the best deal and not tied to the same retailer it buys from. ACT will give New Zealanders the right to sell the power they make, choose their buyer, and export more electricity when the network has room.

3.0 Open transmission to private investment: If someone is prepared to invest their own capital to remove an electricity bottleneck, the rules should make that possible. ACT will allow private investors to build, own and operate new transmission connected to the National Grid where they meet common technical and reliability standards.

4.0 Break the connection bottleneck: Connecting a new home, subdivision, factory, solar farm or other development to the electricity network can involve significant cost and delay. ACT will break the connection bottleneck by letting qualified providers compete to deliver customer-funded connection work faster and cheaper.

5.0 Make smarter technology compete with expensive new lines: Consumers should not be charged for an expensive network upgrade when a battery, flexible connection or demand-response solution could solve the same problem for less. ACT will make batteries and smarter grid technology compete with expensive new lines so consumers are not charged for gold-plating when a cheaper solution will do.

“High power prices will not be fixed by politicians looking for a business to blame or an industry to meddle in. The problem is when regulation makes it too hard for new generation, new technology and new competitors to enter the market.

“ACT will open the electricity system to competition and investment so Kiwi households and businesses have access to reliable electricity at a price they can afford.”

ACTs full policy here.