Energy

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• The government should divest its ownership of electricity generators.
• Relax regulatory restrictions on the building of new generation capacity.
• ACT supports more openness to exploration and extraction of coal and oil, with the goal of increasing revenues and business activity, and lowering local prices. (more here)

• Development of a fully renewable electricity generation system, except for dry winter emergency supply, by 2030.
• Developing fuel efficiency standards for all motor vehicles entering the country and introduce mandatory energy efficiency standards for a wider range of appliances and machinery.
• Re-establishing the Electricity Commission as a Sustainable Energy Commission, which will work with the Commerce Commission to investigate the level of profits in the energy industry in recent years.
• Require an urgent independent review of Transpower's planned grid upgrade with a view to developing alternatives to coal power stations. Also  develop a long-term strategy to ensure the grid can serve as a network connecting a distributed energy system.
• Letting a Government tender for a five year programme to produce and install 500, 000 sq metres of solar water heating panels. Requiring that solar water heating or technologies with equivalent performance be mandatory in all new houses, hotels, motels, and residential institutions after the five year programme above has been completed. (more here)

• Ensure there are no more sales of shares in government-owned power companies.
• Save Kiwi households hundreds of dollars per year on their power bills through NZ Power.
• Improve information and transparency for electricity consumers about the electricity they use.
• Promote energy efficiency and ensure at least 90% of New Zealand’s electricity is generated from renewable sources by 2025.
• Insist that the highest environmental standards and stringent safeguards, as well as robust contingency plans, apply for petroleum and mineral extraction. (more here)

• Not available on their website yet.

• Implement a renewable energy strategy to address our reliance on fossil fuels; to be developed in consultation with iwi; and which establishes a cross-party inquiry to investigate our response to the peak oil crisis.
• We support a moratorium on off-shore drilling to enable full consultation, particularly with mana whenua, on the appropriate mechanisms to ensure any adverse economic, environmental, social and cultural risks are managed. (more here)

• Encouraging responsible energy exploration, including through new data acquisition projects.
• Major improvements to health and safety requirements in the minerals sector, and in the oil and gas sector.
• Improve energy efficiency by encouraging and assisting households and businesses to become more energy efficient and reduce their carbon footprint. (more here)

• Ensure that applications for energy projects undergo a streamlined process directly through the Environment Court.
• Buy back and merge the three generating SOEs and change their mandate to ensure the delivery of affordable electricity, greater security of supply, and vastly improved planning and development of capacity.
• Introduce greater transparency and require the full disclosure of line and other fixed charges on energy bills.
• Ensure that energy efficiency measures are encompassed by the wider energy policies of government.
• Amend the RMA to provide for a more rapid consents process for infrastructure projects, while ensuring local input is preserved.  (more here)

• Develop a National Energy Strategy.
• Fund all stages of investment of significant NZ inventions of new sustainable energy forms to ensure the innovation is not lost to NZ and is implemented as soon as practicable.
• Encourage the development of NZ owned and operated alternative energy schemes.
• Resist new big-scale hydro-electricity schemes that require the damming of untouched ‘wild rivers’ such as the Mokihinui. (more here)