The case for energy loans: read our latest explainer
In this week's e-party, gas in homes is dumb and electric homes are not, a simple solution for those who need to charge their EVs on the street, the wooden winds of change are blowing, and more electric tractor news (this time from the 1920s).
Home fires not burning
Despite the boastful gas lobby continuing to assure New Zealanders that gas will be available for their homes, Rewiring Aotearoa’s official position on the matter is that putting gas in your house is really dumb - mostly because it’s more expensive than the electric options that are now available and is likely to get more expensive as the gas fields diminish. It's also dumb because it’s bad for your body if you’re burning it indoors and it’s a major (and unnecessary) source of carbon emissions.
So-called ‘renewable’ gas is even more expensive than fossil gas and there simply won't be enough of it to be useful.
Not surprisingly, given the economics, it’s becoming increasingly common to see developments turning away from gas and going all-electric. In New York, an all-electric skyscraper opened this year, and a new passive house development in New York State is fossil-fuel free.
The state of Victoria has banned new gas connections, but as the economics swing in favour of electric options - and the more knowledge homeowners have about the higher running costs of fossil fuel homes - bans may not be needed because (and this deserves repeating) gas in homes is dumb.
Kevler Development is one company that has seen the light. It has made solar panels standard on its 266 home Harrow Green development in Rolleston, and there’s no gas connections in sight.
The homes have electric appliances and a relay in the switchboard to prioritise solar to heat the water cylinder, then the heating system when the hot water has reached temperature. They are also prewired for smart EV charging and if the homeowner has an EV it will provide and install the charger for free, as well as give them 30,000 RUCs.
Electric homes appear to be more appealing homes and another development of 340 lots will be following this template. The company has also invested in 50 panels to run the compound.
On a smaller scale, a new development in Auckland called Tūī Glen is promising zero energy bills and other sustainable features. And Octopus Energy is aiming to create 100,000 zero energy bill homes in the UK by 2030.
Some homes with large solar arrays, like Jonathan Holmes’ passive house in Hawea, are getting paid handsomely by their retailers for their contribution to the grid and we’re advocating strongly for customers to be paid fairly so they can make even more. We have ticket scalping laws for big events, but we don’t do anything about energy scalping. So let's end energy scalping!
Building well from the start is important to reduce bills and emissions (and it appears there will be a buildings and construction chapter in the second Emissions Reduction Plan), but we won’t reach our emissions targets if we’re just focusing on new homes, simply because we don’t build enough of them.
Swapping out the fossil fuel machines and adding rooftop solar and batteries to our existing homes - and offering incentives or long-term finance to do it - is also what we need to be focusing on.
Take it to the streets
The vast majority of New Zealand homes have access to off-street parking, which means they can plug in their EV to a dedicated smart charger or create a more ‘organic’ slow-charging set up with cords hanging out windows, snaking under garage doors or going through cat flaps.
But as our cities change and intensification increases, off street parking becomes more of a luxury and cars may need to remain on the street. Fast charging is an option, but it’s the most expensive way to charge your EV, and some places have chargers on lampposts or bollards.
But the Kerbo Charge - which can run an EV charging cable from your house to your car via a channel in the footpath - offers a simpler solution.
The company installed its first channels in 2023 and now has 25 trials running with councils in the UK.
It's not just good for homes. One of the best things about this idea is that businesses could put chargers out front.
Power tools
We mentioned Lincoln University’s new electric tractor in last week’s edition. It’s a beautiful Dutch machine and it’s nice for Forest Lodge’s Monarch electric tractor to finally have some company.
But, while doing some rural research, one of our team discovered what could be the world’s first electric tractor.
“An electric tractor works alongside a horse team in Canterbury in the 1930s. The electric tractor was developed in Ashburton to increase local demand for electricity. Although the machine looked cumbersome, with its pivoted turret through which the feeder cable was passed from a transformer on a nearby truck, it worked quite well. The eight machines built managed over 8,000 hours work between them. However, tractors driven by oil fuels proved cheaper to run.”
That was then, but this, as the Electric Farms report shows, is now: “The agriculture sector spends around $700 million on diesel each year. Shifting away from diesel machines is a huge economic opportunity for farms because electric machines are so much cheaper to run. When powered by solar and batteries, farms can dramatically reduce their energy bills and improve their resilience.”
Lots of big electric machines have big batteries, but don’t discount the cord. As the country’s biggest electric shovel at Macraes mine in Otago shows, sometimes it pays to be plugged in.
Tall timber
Renewables require materials to build, but it’s a tiny sliver compared to the materials we extract to run our world on fossil fuels and most of what gets built is recyclable (our latest ‘Watt Now?’ runs through the reasons electrification is a much better option when it comes to reducing waste).
Still, there is always room for improvement and Swedish company Modvion is making massive wind turbines made out of wood.
By using lighter engineered wood, the company says it ”can build a tree that’s 150 or even 200 metres high and increase the efficiency of the turbines” while also reducing emissions.
And if that’s a bit big for the backyard, small wind turbines could be an option.
Let’s hope Modvion’s next innovation is a combined ‘global cooling fan’ and electricity-generating turbine.
RNZ's Kate Newton reports on the "madness" of thousands of new piped gas connections being installed into houses every year, despite dwindling supplies and higher lifetime costs.
Casey said it was positive that the numbers showed people starting to leave the gas network of their own accord, but not all households were in a position to make that choice.
"If we don't plan for a decommissioning of the gas network, then it's going to be a chaotic transition, where vulnerable New Zealanders really suffer."
As the research of Rewiring and others has shown, gas is expensive, it's getting more expensive, it's terrible for your health when burned inside and there are substitutes available right now that, on average, do the same job for less money over the long run for households, would save the country billions on health costs and lost productivity, and don't pump out unnecessary emissions.
Around 300,000 homes and businesses have connections to the gas network (it’s estimated another 300,000 use more expensive bottled gas, mostly in the South Island). The number of active connections has started to decline recently and the country’s largest gas network, Vector, is forecasting no new residential or commercial connections after 2029.
Upfront capital costs are the main barrier for many homes, which is why we're working hard on a low-interest, long-term loan scheme that can be used to pay for electric upgrades, including hot water heat pumps. This would mean paying for a new thing with a loan would be cheaper than paying to run the old thing.
Read more about the scheme here.
Disconnection costs are also a major barrier. We have seen examples where households permanently disconnecting from the network have been charged between $1,000 and $2,000 to have a meter permanently removed (i.e. digging up the pipes to the road), even though it should only cost customers $200 to have the connection capped at the house.
RNZ even reported a case where a business customer was quoted $7,500 but took the case to Utilities Disputes, where complaints about disconnection costs have been rising.
The Australian Energy Regulator and the state of Victoria have now capped the disconnection fees to a few hundred dollars to stop this kind of behaviour and protect households.
"My message is to not wait it out – instead, grab the opportunity to get ahead. In the long term, unless we hit another Maui, which is unlikely and would take decades to bring online, the era of cheap, abundant gas is over. Business leaders need to start planning now." That's EECA's chief executive Marcos Pelenur writing in the Herald about businesses struggling with rising gas prices and faster than expected declines in gas reserves.
Read moreDownloadTalk about driving change!ETrucks' Ross Linton is at the forefront of New Zealand's nascent electric trucking scene and can claim responsibility for a number of firsts, from the country's first electric concrete truck to the country's first battery swap set up. Since he brought his first electric truck in to the country back in 2018, the technology has advanced massively and driving on electrons has become quite a bit cheaper than diesel and, not surprisingly, that's inspiring a great deal of interest among businesses.
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