An Aotearoa powered by clean, affordable, renewable energy
The Green Party will power our homes, whare, and communities with clean, renewable, and affordable energy.
Power should be generated for the good of our climate and our communities. However, successive governments have designed an energy system that relies on fossil fuels and puts shareholder profit ahead of affordable household bills.
To lower power bills and keep the climate healthy for future generations, the Green Party knows we must use more renewable energy and keep fossil fuels where they belong - in the ground.
In government, the Green Party banned new offshore oil and gas exploration. We have also taken action to remove coal boilers from every school and hospital, insulated thousands of homes, and rolled out funding for community energy projects.
But Aotearoa needs faster action to protect the climate and lower household bills. Our plan will stop all oil and gas exploration once and for all; increase renewable electricity generation so we can electrify all households, businesses, transport, and industry; and support a just transition through the creation of thousands of clean energy jobs.
The time is now to make Aotearoa a place where everything from making the morning coffee, to travelling to and from work, to warming our homes is powered by clean, affordable and renewable energy.
Our Plan
- Ban new extraction of fossil fuels in Aotearoa.
- Roll out solar panels on suitable public buildings such as hospitals and Kāinga Ora housing.
- Scale up support for community energy solutions, including community and marae based clean-energy hubs, with solar and wind generation, local markets, battery storage solutions and peer-to-peer retail trading.
- Fundamentally reform the electricity market structure to make it easier for renewable energy suppliers and distributed generation to be set up and operate with certainty, remove market structure incentives for fossil fuel use in generation, and require transparent wholesale pricing systems.
- Ensure government dividends from energy companies are reinvested into clean energy generation including for community level systems (such as rooftop solar and shared battery storage).
- Support households to improve energy efficiency and rapidly transition away from gaspowered heating and cooking.
- Prohibit new fossil gas connections in buildings where there are viable alternatives, as recommended by the Climate Change Commission.
- Work with industry to support demand response in electricity use, and replace industrial coal and gas with low-emissions alternatives.