Written By:
- Date published:
3:34 pm, July 20th, 2026 - 16 comments
Categories: election 2026, energy, greens -
Tags: electricity, Kiwipower
New policy suite out from the Green Party: Kiwipower and Power for all of us
As with Labour’s recent solar policy, this is intelligent policy design. Green politics has always included human wellbeing alongside the environment, and here we see the timely confluence of that with New Zealand’s twofold pressing crises: climate mitigation and adaptation, and the cost of living.
This is what the Greens have been on about all this time, we have to solve the human and environmental problems in tandem. These policies address the cost crisis, the lean generation year crisis, and also the impending power shortage as New Zealand electrifies.
Kiwipower would be a publicly-owned Crown entity with two main focuses:
Power for All of Us,
From the website,
Aotearoa New Zealand has abundant renewable resources: solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, biomass. We have enough to deliver affordable bills and a clean, resilient energy system.
Despite renewable energy being the cheapest form of electricity we have, power bills continue to skyrocket. It’s putting more pressure on households just trying to keep up with the cost of living.
More than 200,000 households cannot afford to heat their homes, businesses are forced to close, industries are shrinking and workers are losing jobs all because of unaffordable electricity costs.
Four big power companies control over 85 percent of both retail and generation markets. With this control of our energy system, they’ve been able to rip people off and rake in massive profits for their shareholders.
Affordable bills should not be a luxury. A warm, dry home powered by clean energy should be within everyone’s reach.
Our plan will fundamentally change our energy system in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Full policy details in this PDF
The Kiwipower PDF explainer
Take the broken energy system quiz
Green Party Press Release
have to say also, I am excited to see how much Labour and the Greens policies are dovetailing. This is very smart by the Greens, policies that are easy to vote for and easy for Labour to say yes to. It undercuts the right wing and MSM narratives of a vote for Labour is a vote for the crazy Greens rhetoric.
And tying it to the wealth tax is another pressure on Labour.
"dovetailing"
That's the genius, right there!
Agree Weka. I particularly liked Hipkins' response to the daft $1billion NZF gas exploration fund where he said that this money would be much better used on developing renewable energy.
There's a lot to like in this policy. It includes funding solar for some Public and Māori housing.
Access to solar for renters:
I'd like to see what the expansion involves. The fairly old rental unit I live in has legally missed out on most previous upgrades: not able to assess wall and ceiling insulation mainly because there's no crawl space between ceiling and roof, so no insulation; landlord decided against a heat pump because it'd involve capped wiring across the main living space, and cutting a hole in the glass beside the balcony.
I got extractor fans in outside wall and not the more efficient ceiling extractor cos of no crawl space. And I got a wall heater that is no cheaper to run than the heaters I've already been using.
I think there is a great deal to like here. Taken together, these policies could put New Zealand’s electricity system on a cleaner, firmer and ultimately more productive footing.
The Greens are also right to connect climate policy with human wellbeing. Renewable generation, household efficiency, affordable heating and distributed energy should not be treated as separate problems. They are different parts of the same transition.
What is missing, however, is a serious account of how we will fund and build the network infrastructure needed to deliver it.
New Zealand does not only need more generation. We need substantially more capacity throughout the transmission and distribution system to accommodate electrification, distributed generation, batteries, EVs and increasingly active consumers.
That investment will fall heavily on electricity distribution businesses. Yet many EDBs, particularly consumer-owned regional networks, are deliberately conservative organisations operating with limited capital, strong pressure to keep lines charges low and an obligation to maintain existing assets and reliability.
The problem is not simply that New Zealand has too many EDBs. Rationalisation might improve scale and capability, but it does not answer the central questions: who funds anticipatory investment, who carries the risk when demand is uncertain, and how are the costs divided between existing consumers, new connections, taxpayers and future generations?
For regulated EDBs, the price-quality model can constrain the speed and shape of investment. For consumer-owned EDBs, the constraint is often even more immediate: asking current communities to pay today for capacity that may only be fully used years from now.
There is also a danger that we celebrate lower generation costs while quietly transferring the cost of the transition into rapidly increasing network charges.
KiwiPower may provide the generation and firming capacity. Household loans may accelerate solar, batteries and electrification. But unless the policy also provides a credible financing and regulatory model for the poles, wires, substations, digital systems and workforce required to connect it all, we risk building an ambitious energy policy on top of a distribution system that has not been funded or designed to deliver it.
I've also seen the point made that power companies will increase fixed charges as they make less from power consumption. I'm unclear if the Greens intend to regulate that, see quote below in response to Dennis.
That is a legitimate concern, although I think it is broader than power companies simply replacing lost consumption profits with fixed charges.
A substantial share of the electricity system’s costs is fixed or capacity-based. The network still has to maintain the connection, lines, transformers and enough capacity for winter evenings, even where a household buys less electricity during the day because it has solar.
As grid consumption falls, those costs still have to be recovered. That could mean higher fixed charges, but it could also mean demand charges, time-of-use pricing or other network tariffs. Much of that pressure originates in EDB and transmission pricing, although retailers ultimately decide how those costs are packaged on the customer’s bill.
The difficult policy question is how to do that fairly. Solar households still rely on the grid for backup, evening demand and exports, but large fixed charges can disproportionately affect low-use and low-income households, particularly renters and others who cannot install solar.
I cannot see much in the Green policy explaining how retail tariff structures would be regulated or how network costs would be funded as household grid consumption falls. A fair export price is useful, but it does not answer who pays for the shared network.
Some form of regulatory guardrail may therefore be required to prevent retailers simply shifting an increasing share of the bill into unavoidable fixed charges. That could involve caps, regulated tariffs, or something analogous to the price-quality framework applied to non-consumer-owned EDBs.
Either way, it would need to be designed carefully.
A blunt cap on fixed charges could merely shift costs into usage charges or undermine smaller retailers. The real objective should be to constrain excessive margins and unfair tariff structures while still allowing legitimate wholesale, transmission and distribution costs to be recovered.
I'd be keen to acclaim the package if my inner sceptic would just shut up awhile.
How? Insofar as prices are supposedly set by market forces, a fair price looks like a unicorn. Mass feeling seems to be negative on the feasibility of the status quo seeming fair. That the market is actually a cartel is subject to the emperor's new clothes effect.
So unless they front a mechanism for guiding the market to the right level of fairness, voters are likely to dismiss the policy as aspirational only (the right calls this virtue-signalling). Some kind of clue how the policy will get the intended result seems missing.
This peculiar point suggesting folks cannot get power from the sun because a law stops them operating a device and/or system to do so will probably baffle all punters – particularly those already doing it! Rather than going on a wild commissar hunt, perhaps they could explain the policy point? My acrobat reader keeps freezing on the first page so I can't tell if they have actually clarified their point sufficiently within…
instead of front footing your ignorant scepticism you could just ask.
Plug in solar is currently not legal in NZ. Lots of discussion about this across parties in the past month.
re sell back pricing,
from the full policy link in the post
Plug-in solar is currently illegal in New Zealand because WorkSafe has a long-standing prohibition on standard solar inverters plugging directly into normal wall sockets. The ban protects line workers and prevents electrical fires…
This view from Google implies a bureaucratic stone-wall strategy is the culprit – not a bad law. Is that correct? If so, do we assume that changing the govt will solve the problem by causing problematic bureaucrats to follow instructions??
Your quote from the pdf contains a should. I've never ever seen reality change due to the influence of a should. I do agree with the final point though, so if their intent is to achieve fairness thereby, then I support the policy. Bit murky insofar as they merely intend to reform pricing for solar users. Perhaps how to do that is only ascertainable in consultation with tech system experts? If so, contingency applies…
It may be in the detail, which I haven't read, but I'd like to see solar panels/batteries mandatory, where practicable, on ALL new builds.
Otherwise, one hell of a lot to like in this policy.
Great policy. fantastic direction.
Beyond the environmental positives and cost of living relief, there is a brighter apect to this.
Undoing one of the damaging consequences of neo liberalism. Taking key infrasturcture and transforming (boom boom) it from a vehicle for rentiers to extract income to an essential public service. Affordable enrgy for homes and businesses.
The impatient part of me wanted Rogernomics undone in one foul swoop. This can be part of the start of a return to a fairer, decent form of government.
Next on the list, housing.
that's what I'm thinking! The policy is undercutting neoliberalism in some subtle but significant ways and putting something else in its place. And doing so without scaring the horses.
Amazing.