No images? Click here
Energy Hardship Update - June 2022
Tēnā koutou katoa
Nau mai, haere mai ki Energy Hardship Update.
Welcome to our second issue for 2022. This issue we’ve again handed the pen over to Keri Brown, Chair of the independent Energy Hardship Expert Panel, to give an update on the Panel’s work. As you’ll see from Keri’s letter, there’s much work to do before the Panel makes its recommendations to Ministers in mid-2023 on ways to reduce energy hardship. But it’s great to see how much mahi they’ve already done, and where there are opportunities for others to input into their work. We also have some exciting news to share about our work developing a definition of energy hardship and MBIE’s SEEC Programme that funds community-level energy education initiatives.
Energy Hardship Expert Panel – Letter from the Chair
I hope you are all keeping safe and well. It’s been a challenging year for everyone with Covid and rising cost of living.
I want to provide you with an update on the Energy Hardship Expert Panel’s (the Panel) mahi over the last 6 months. We’ve been working hard alongside many of you, and I would like to thank you for your contributions and interest.
The 5 members of the Panel were appointed in September 2021 and we spent our first months considering the latest information and insights to better understand energy hardship in Aotearoa. The information-gathering included, but was not limited to:
• the Electricity Price Review findings and recommendations,
• insights and advice from the Energy Hardship Reference Group and small group forums
• MBIE’s work to develop a definition and measures for energy hardship
• key papers and reports.
We've developed an outcomes framework that places children, whānau and their wellbeing, at the centre of our mahi. Our aspirational outcomes include:
• Households can access and afford the energy needed to live in a safe and healthy home, and can reach out and receive the support required.
• Households should be supported to make the best decisions about their energy needs and be able to engage confidently with energy companies.
• There should be suitable energy protections in place for people living in sub-standard homes or who are vulnerable or medically dependent.
Outcomes framework [PDF, 207 KB]
The framework also describes our understanding of the current energy hardship landscape that people are facing in Aotearoa.
This framework underpins our collaborative approach and the content of our work programme over the next 12 months. It is a living document that we will revisit as our work progresses.
It is essential to the Panel to work within core values and tikanga that guide us as we travel through the challenges and opportunities – our framework includes 7 foundation principles we developed through a te ao Māori lens.
It's also essential to us that we are engaged in a collaborative process. After listening, researching, talking and testing our ideas with others, we developed 5 kete, baskets, each containing a list of issues or underlying drivers of energy hardship. We look forward to refining the kete as our work progresses and using them to focus our work and as a guide for future discussions.
ur conversations and research have provided us with key insights about the state of play in Aotearoa – we’ve set out some of these in our framework. The insights gained to date, and others we gather as we progress our mahi, will help us as we turn our attention to developing ideas for how to address the issues identified.
Engagement is at the heart of our work. As you can see from our high-level roadmap, engagement feeds into every stage of our work, taking several forms along the way, whether tapping into the expertise of a few or seeking views from the wider community.
High-level roadmap [PDF, 93 KB]
I’m looking forward to collaborating with others through workshops and other means over the next few months. These discussions, along with further research and analysis, will help us mature and develop our understanding of the problem and consider possible solutions, and feed into our discussion paper that will go out for public consultation later this year. We will draw on this consultation to develop final recommendations for Minister of Energy and Resources Megan Woods and her Ministerial colleagues around mid-2023.
We value receiving feedback from everyone in Aotearoa, and I’m keen to hear your views. Please feel free to contact me through energymarkets@mbie.govt.nz.
Keri Brown
Chair, Energy Hardship Expert Panel
Photo: The Panel at work, from left to right, Helen Leahy, Kay Brereton, Keri Brown, Kevin Angland, Amanda-Lanuola Dunlop
Definition of energy hardship and wellbeing
MBIE has released a final definition of what it means to be in energy hardship and energy wellbeing. After extensive research, workshops, wānanga and then a public consultation on draft proposals, MBIE has defined energy wellbeing as:
‘When individuals, households and whānau are able to obtain and afford adequate energy services to support their wellbeing in their home or kāinga.’
Energy hardship, as the inverse of energy wellbeing, is the opposite of this definition.
Late last year, MBIE sought public feedback on its draft definition, draft energy wellbeing framework and a proposed suite of indicators that can help measure energy hardship. Sixty-three submissions were received and that feedback was then analysed to refine the definition and finalising the conceptual framework after receiving strong agreement on the draft version.
There was strong support for the proposed conceptual framework, which illustrates the inter-connected factors contributing to a household’s energy hardship or wellbeing. No changes were made to the final version, but it remains open to evolving over time as work is undertaken to further understand the drivers behind the energy hardship situation of a household or whānau.
MBIE is continuing to work on its suite of indicators based on feedback and expects these to be released in the coming months.
A summary of submissions is available on the MBIE website. Individual submissions will be published early next week, where submitters have given permission to do so.
The team would like to thank all those who took the time to make a submission and contributed to the development of the proposals.
SEEC Programme – Round 3 funding round opening soon
Third funding round of the Support for Energy Education in Communities (SEEC) Programme is due to open in the coming weeks. The SEEC Programme was established in 2020 to deliver community-level energy education to help households in need.
In this round, there is $1.7 million available to eligible community-level groups,
organisations or businesses to contribute to the provision of personalised, specialist advice and education to households in energy hardship, and purchasing low-cost energy-saving equipment and devices.
Round 3 is an open funding round for anyone group that meets the eligibility criteria, including successful and unsuccessful applicants from previous rounds.
We will send out an e-alert to newsletter subscribers when the third round opens. We will also email organisations on our SEEC mailing list and will update the SEEC Programme webpage on the MBIE website with more information about the focus areas of Round 3, funding and criteria. If you would like to be part of this mailing list or are unsure if you are on it, please email energymarkets@mbie.govt.nz, with the subject ‘SEEC mailing list’.
If you’re thinking about applying and haven’t applied before, we recommend looking at the lists of previously funded SEEC projects on this webpage for ideas on the types of projects and organisations you could partner with.
There is also a sample application form that gives an indication of the information we’re looking for when considering applications, and a progress report from previous rounds providing insights from existing SEEC projects.
Five SEEC initiatives receive a boost
In April, MBIE brought forward $350,000 of SEEC funding to be made available to existing SEEC-funded projects that could be restarted or extended to deliver further energy education and support through autumn and winter.
This was in response to the growing cost of living, which is likely to be exacerbated as winter increases households’ energy needs.
In May, 5 organisations - Anglican Care, Ecobulb, ERANZ, Habitat for Humanity – Northern Region and Northpower – received a funding boost to expand their SEEC-funded initiative. Collectively, these organisations deliver a range of services, including in-home energy assessments, energy coaching, support to find the best electricity retailer and small items to help keep warm during winter and save on energy bills.
The Funding Boost is an opportunity to provide more immediate support to households in need by enabling existing SEEC providers to maintain momentum, using existing staff and delivery capability.
Earlier recipients of SEEC Programme funding were invited to apply for a funding boost to restart or extend their SEEC-funded pilot.
New funding available for community-based renewable energy projects
In May as part of Budget 2022, the Government announced $16 million over 4 years to support small-scale community renewable energy projects. This builds on and expands the successful Māori and Public Housing Renewable Energy Fund and aims to support low-income communities or communities with insecure access to energy.
Māori and Public Housing Renewable Energy Fund
We’re looking forward to sharing more details on how the fund will work when they become available later in the year.
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.
