Energy Hardship Update - December 2021

Kia ora, welcome

Nau mai, haere mai ki Energy Hardship Update.

Thank you for signing up to receive this e-newsletter. This is a regular update on our energy hardship work and provides opportunities to share your views directly with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE) Energy Markets Policy team.

This is our last issue for the year with the latest updates on our work towards reducing energy hardship in Aotearoa. We also issue shorter ‘special editions’ when we have particular announcements or news to share.

New Energy Hardship Reference Group appointed

20 representatives from industry, NGOs, iwi and Māori groups to join government agencies and a regulator to form the new Energy Hardship Reference Group. 

The cross-sector group has been established to facilitate information-sharing and greater coordination and to support efforts aimed at reducing energy hardship in communities. 

“A number of initiatives aimed at reducing energy hardship already exist across the sector,” MBIE’s Energy and Markets Resources General Manager Justine Cannon says. 

“Some are focused on immediate support for households in need, while others have a longer-term focus that will better position us to develop targeted and effective initiatives to reduce energy hardship. By creating this new group, key organisations will have a platform where members can share experiences and research, test ideas, and provide a central point to link with other groups working to advocate for energy consumers. This will allow government agencies and others to draw on this collective pool of knowledge to help develop, and better coordinate, initiatives to improve energy wellbeing.” 

The group’s insights will also be shared with the independent, 5-person Energy Hardship Expert Panel, which has recently been established to recommend policy priorities and actions to government. 

“One thing we’ve been really deliberate about is making sure the Reference Group is large enough to encompass a balanced and diverse range of experiences, perspectives and areas of expertise. This recognises the complexity of the problems that contribute to energy hardship and the need to develop solutions from multiple fronts,” Justine Cannon said. 

Members are initially appointed for a 12-month term. The group will run for 2 years, and may be extended if needed. MBIE will provide secretariat support. 

The establishment of the Reference Group and the Expert Panel are in response to recommendations to government from the independent Electricity Price Review in 2019. The review emphasised the causes of energy hardship extend beyond the electricity sector, and solutions therefore will require the government, regulators, communities and the industry to work together.

Learn more about the Energy Hardship Reference Group and its members.

Energy hardship expert panel and reference group

Energy Hardship Expert Panel gets to work

The 5-person Energy Hardship Expert Panel, announced by the Energy and Resources Minister in September, has hit the ground running and already starting to plan their priorities and work programme for the year ahead.

The Panel has met twice and the Chair, Keri Brown said:

"I am delighted to be working with a group of welfare, electricity, hardship and health leaders who are bringing such diverse and rich perspectives to work together on how we can help resolve the complex issue of energy hardship in Aotearoa. We have a huge challenge ahead and are committed to delivering recommendations which will help lift energy wellbeing in Aotearoa."

The Panel is developing its work programme in consultation with the Energy and Resources Minister and MBIE. The Panel is also looking to commence its stakeholder engagement programme early next year to help canvass priority issues and potential solutions with communities most affected by energy hardship and those involved in delivering its solutions.

The other members of the Panel are Vaka Tautua Chief Executive Dr Amanda-Lanuola Dunlop, Pouārahi/Chief Executive of Te Pūtahitanga o Te Waipounamu Helen Leahy, beneficiary advocate Kay Brereton, and former Electricity Retailers’ Association of New Zealand director Kevin Angland. The members have been appointed until 30 June 2023 and will work alongside the Energy Hardship Reference Group.

Energy hardship expert panel and reference group

Have your say – Defining energy hardship consultation submission period extended

You can have your say by filling in the online survey or by sending us your submission directly by emailing definingenergyhardship@mbie.govt.nz 

Defining Energy Hardship survey

Submissions now close 5pm, Friday 24 December.  

Why make a submission?

While the term ‘energy hardship’ is frequently used, New Zealand currently doesn’t have an official definition. MBIE has developed a proposed definition and a potential suite of measures for energy hardship. Your feedback will help us to improve these proposals.

Defining Energy Hardship consultation

Highlights of the Otago Energy Research Centre Annual Symposium 2021

By Nina Campbell, EECA

Last month, the annual Otago Energy Research Centre Symposium included an exciting day of talks on alleviating energy hardship.

The event, held at the University of Otago, was sponsored by EECA and hosted by the Energy Hardship Evaluation Consortium.

The Symposium provided an opportunity for people working in this space to share recent work on energy hardship alleviation, energy wellbeing and resilience, and included discussions about projects underway and developing measurement frameworks for tracking progress towards energy wellbeing.

A range of perspectives was heard, from Vector’s analysis of smart meter data to understand the impact of EECA’s home retrofit programmes over the years, to a brand new home retrofit project getting started in Otago by Rūnaka-based consultancy Aukaha. We also heard from GNS Science on energy resilience, and Senior Lecturer/Researcher at Te Rōpū Rangahau Hauora a Eru Pōmare, University of Otago, Andrew Waa, about his use of Māori wellbeing frameworks for housing, and many more. A quick-fire round of sharing initiatives provided a great platform to support cross-pollination and collaboration across these fields – check out the presentations on the Otago University website.

Attendees heard an overview of government efforts to understand and alleviate energy hardship, driven by the recommendations of the 2019 Electricity Price Review. Inspired by these good news stories, the day rounded off with a panel discussion led by Professor Janet Stephenson, from Otago University who is world-renowned for her work on ‘energy cultures’. The panel and audience explored how best to contribute value in the energy hardship evaluation space and identified a few key take-aways including:

• Invite more diverse voices and perspectives into the Energy Hardship Evaluation Consortium.
• Be bold and agile – don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.
• Do a stocktake of useful evaluation frameworks from which to start iterating through a set of shared core evaluation indicators and metrics.
• The approach we develop should be scalable and flexible to different contexts and objectives.
• Consider opportunities to establish a knowledge-sharing platform that could house tools, forms, surveys for practitioners to replicate.
• Meet in February 2022 to get these actions underway.

If you are working on measuring progress in alleviating energy hardship and wellbeing and would like to get involved in the Energy Hardship Evaluation Consortium please email Nina.campbell@eeca.govt.nz

Check out the event website for more information and slides from the fantastic line-up of speakers.

15th OERC Symposium 2021 – The Challenge of Net Zero by 2050 – Otago Energy Research Centre

Energy education and devices making a difference

The 9 projects to receive funding from the first round of the government’s SEEC Programme are making great progress providing energy advice to households to achieve warmer, healthier and drier homes and lower power bills. 

To date, these projects have completed more than 1,500 energy assessments and held 37 community events where they have passed on valuable energy-saving advice, tips and information. More than 34,000 energy-saving items have also been distributed such as LED lightbulbs and low-flow shower heads.

Congratulations to Ecobulb and King Country Trust, and Habitat for Humanity – Northern Region for successfully completing their projects and making a huge difference to households in need. Both projects have received further funding in the second round of SEEC Programme funding to expand their projects.

You can read more about the successful projects here: 

Government gives households extra help to reduce power bills – Beehive.govt.nz 

Spotlight on Habitat for Humanity - Northern Region’s Healthy Homes Interventions project 

Habitat for Humanity – Northern Region volunteers distributing Winter Warmer Packs to help people keep their homes warm and healthy.

A key part of this project is delivering Winter Warmer Packs, which include essential winter items, to low-income whānau. Funding was used to pilot Winter Warmer Packs in Northland and improve existing delivery in Auckland. Funding also supported its Tō Kāinga Whare programme that provides home interventions for whānau with poor health linked to damp and cold housing and energy hardship. Both programmes included home education.

Project organiser Leana Hunt said that Habitat for Humanity and their partnering agencies distributed packs to 601 households, reaching 3005 people. Māori and Pasifika made up 48% and 35% respectively of the households participating in the projects.

Habitat for Humanity surveyed participating households and found that prior to receiving the packs, 47% of respondents had no source of heating. Nearly 50% struggled to pay their power bill or could only pay some of the bill some of the time. After receiving the packs, 73% agreed or strongly agreed that their health had improved, and 71% used the heater when they needed it while also using other items in the pack such as hot water bottles and blankets to keep warm.

Some participants have said:

 “I’m glad to finally be living in a place that isn’t so freezing cold all the time which has helped our health improve.”

“Thank you so much Habitat, I'm truly grateful for everything. Changed my whole life completely knowing there are people who really care and understand my situation with my family and whare, truly blessed.

The 15 projects that have received funding from the second round of the SEEC Programme have started delivering their initiatives.

More energy saving advice to hit home thanks to government funding – Beehive.govt.nz 

A huge thank you to all SEEC funding recipients – your hard work and dedication is helping make a difference to people who need support.

We look forward to hearing more about your success. In addition, we will use the findings from these pilots to contribute to the government’s longer-term strategy to address energy hardship.

There is a further $2.05 million available in 2022/23 and $2.95 million available in 2023/24, with the third funding round expected to open in mid-2022. Stay tuned to find out more.

How to engage hard-to-reach energy users – case study examples from around the world 

MBIE and EECA support New Zealand’s participation in the ‘Hard-to-Reach Energy Users Task’ research collaboration being undertaken as part of the International Energy Agency’s Users Technology Collaboration Programme. Our participation is led by New Zealand researcher Dr Sea Rotmann (Chief Executive Officer of SEA - Sustainable Energy Advice Ltd).

The research collaboration recently completed an analysis of over 20 case studies in 8 countries on hard-to-reach energy users in the residential and small business sectors. These case studies provide insights into public or utility-driven programmes that are targeted towards a broad and diverse spectrum of hard-to-reach energy users in the residential (with examples from vulnerable households) and non-residential (with examples from small businesses) sectors.

Read more about the research project and case studies on the Users TCP website.

Hard-to-Reach Energy Users – Users TCP

Dr Rotmann will be joined by Danielle Butler from the UK’s National Energy Action to host a  webinar on the findings from the Cross-Country Case Study Comparison on January 19, 2022 (10am CET/10pm NZT).

Register for the webinar – Zoom

Find out more

See the Energy Hardship webpage for more information about our work and progress updates.

Contact us

We welcome any thoughts or questions about this area of work, and any interest you might have to be involved. For further information, please contact the Energy Markets Policy team by emailing energymarkets@mbie.govt.nz

This update is brought to you by the Energy and Resource Markets (ERM) branch, part of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. ERM is the steward of 2 regulatory systems, the energy system and the Crown-owned mineral and petroleum system. These systems are connected – we need resources to make energy and we need energy to extract resources.