Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to support this bill but I wish there was some independent Office of Parliament we could go to to actually double-check the names of pieces of legislation before they are passed tonight. The last thing we should be calling this bill is an energy innovation bill because there is not really much innovation in it. There is no innovative thinking. Look we support it because all this bill does is move around some Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority levies it allows electric vehicles in bus lanes—which experts have actually told us could in fact be counter-productive where it happens—and then that is pretty much it. It deals with secondary networks for apartment buildings for example. But when you look around the world at all the real innovation that is happening in energy you would not call this bill an energy innovation bill if you knew what was happening around the world or knew of the potential for New Zealand. Recently we heard there was $3.6 billion in missed energy efficiency and conservation opportunities facing the country. So if we wanted to talk about the real innovative energy sector there is a lot of stuff we would be talking about that is not contained in this legislation. I wish it could have a more accurate title. I guess you can see it in Minister Judith Collins' energy strategy which has just come out today which is meant to chart our energy efficiency work for the next decade. You know it is a big deal. So what did we see? We saw three things—only three things—in this big multi-year strategy. The first is a 1 percent process heat intensity reduction—1 percent. It sounds pretty good right? But when you look at the data that is what we have achieved since 1990. That is like me saying to you: I'm going to lose weight. I'm going to go on a diet but I am going to do exactly the same thing I have done for the last couple of decades." That is not an ambitious target. That is like a pole-vaulter setting the pole down at about a foot and saying: "I am going to get to the Olympics if I can do this." Then we saw the energy intensity target that was in the previous strategy dropped entirely. I think I know why. I think it was dropped entirely because under the current Government we have dismally missed the target. In fact we are seventh-worst in the entire developed world for energy intensity as a percentage of the economy. That is a big deal because what that means is that all of us as individuals all of us as families and all of our businesses are paying more for one unit of economic output than the vast majority of other equivalent OECD countries are. So again we have an un-innovative energy innovation bill and an un-innovative unambitious business-as-usual energy strategy being released today. I think anyone watching the parliamentary broadcast tonight will see a lot of politicians criticising other parties' policies or inaction but what they want to see though is other parties' solutions and that is what I would like to lay out with the bulk of my time. If we wanted to have a conversation about what an innovative energy bill would look like I suspect it might look a little bit like the energy policy the Green Party released recently. We did not just sit in a room and think about it and talk to ourselves about it; we went out and actively consulted business. We worked with Business New Zealand. We were talking to electricity retailers big and small and to the lines companies the generators the new incumbents and the entrepreneurs. We actually talked to people who are out there innovating like Flick and there are other different models like Vector—which is using batteries solar panels and peer-to-peer electricity networks which is absolutely fundamentally disrupting the way we have done electricity for the last hundred years—and what we found is that there is a better smarter cheaper way we could run an energy system in New Zealand. Let us start with energy poverty which this bill does not address entirely. We know that one-fifth—20 percent—of New Zealand families are classed as being in energy poverty. They are spending more than 10 percent of their weekly disposable income just to keep the lights on or keep the heating on. At the same time we have got 40000 trips to hospital being made by New Zealand children because they are sick as a result of their housing—40000 trips to hospital by Kiwi kids because they are sick from our housing. In fact 1600 additional deaths are attributed to our cold damp housing in winter. That is more than the road toll. Our houses are killing more New Zealanders than the road toll. So if we are talking about energy poverty what I would like to propose is a winter energy payment. What we have proposed is recycling the dividends the power companies give to the Government—recycling that to households earning less than $50000 a year. We could be helping 530000 households next winter by smoothing out their power price spikes over winter through having a winter energy supplement which is what they do in Canada which is what they do in the UK and which is what they do in some Australian states. So that is cheaper electricity. What about cleaner electricity? This innovative legislation does nothing directly to get us towards the 90 percent renewables target. What the Green Party would like to do is actually have a little bit more ambition acknowledge the threat of climate change and say that we can get to 100 percent renewables in average hydrological conditions by 2030. What we have also done is publish a model from Rocky Mountain Institute researchers showing how 100 percent could look. It is affordable it is achievable and—I would put it to the House—eminently desirable to set that target a little bit higher. But what about embracing new technology? What the Green Party would like to do is at the lines network area which is around 40 percent of a customer's bill—these regional distribution monopolies. That is a huge area where we could see real innovation which is missing in this legislation. We have got 29 separate lines companies across the country in many cases reinventing the wheel and duplicating costs. Many of them have only a tiny customer base so they do not have the scale the expertise or the capital to embrace new technologies. What I have proposed is that we could make it easier by using some analogies in the Local Government Act to have lines companies work together merge where appropriate and then have communities support it. I am not talking about forcefully amalgamating our lines companies but about giving them better easier options to work together to save all their customers and the whole country money. The other thing is that our lines companies are very good at installing poles and wires. That is kind of how we have done electricity for a hundred years. We have got pretty good at it now. What we need to do is get better at finding the cheaper alternatives to traditional poles and wires. They are out there when you look across the world from lithium ion batteries to energy efficiency and conservation methods through to demand side measures. The Rocky Mountain Institute research that I mentioned we had published showed that a negawatt—using a unit of electricity less than a megawatt which is a unit of electricity more—is 10 times cheaper than the cheapest new generation we have in New Zealand which is our dirt cheap wind resource. We could be doing it 10 times cheaper if we encouraged people to find easier ways to use less. That could be insulation that could be smart appliances and that could be sending price signals so that people choose when they use electricity to save money and save the rest of the grid in carbon. I would also put it that our lines companies could be publishing more information around where their network constraints are so that new entrepreneurs and new businesses—the true innovators we are not really seeing in this legislation tonight—could say: "Well we could invest in a big distribution line that is going to cost X millions of dollars here but we've got a cheaper option. Can we put it to you?". So we have proposed a comprehensive series of measures to support our distribution network to save money save carbon and run a smarter grid. In terms of our electricity market we have proposed opening it up to more transparency and sunlight because we heard a very clear message from our smaller retailers: they do not feel we have competitive market—and in fact that is what the International Energy Agency said earlier this year in a comprehensive report into the state of the New Zealand electricity system. We would like to propose more transparency on what is actually happening on the hedge markets so that all retailers can operate on a level playing field. I want to see smart new companies come in offering their consumers better solutions to manage electricity and to save them money. So what we have talked about is a smarter way to run the electricity system more transparency and fundamental reforms to our distribution networks. But if we are going to talk about energy innovation in fact what we are seeing by inaction is one of the least innovative things and the most detrimental things happening in our entire electricity system. That is the solar tax on which Judith Collins has sat by while Unison Networks a local regional lines monopoly is charging its customers an additional charge just for having a solar panel. It is entirely arbitrary and entirely ridiculous. There are better ways we could deal with the pricing impacts of greater solar penetration in New Zealand. But taxing it—"taxing" is a bit of an unfair word. Having a specific solar charge is incredibly unfair. It is simply trying to hold back the solar growth that we have seen in New Zealand. I want to see our power companies compete based on the products the services and the price they are offering their consumers and not competing just because they have got a monopoly position and they want to stop customers from making a specific technology choice. If we allow this to happen it could happen to customers who insulate and who invest in efficient appliances. What this bill is is not an energy innovation bill. What we in the Green Party have though is a suite of comprehensive consultative policies that are innovative which is a fantastic choice for the public of New Zealand because it is important that we get cleaner cheaper smarter electricity. It is just around the corner. We are seeing fundamental disruption to the electricity system but token bills like this which are really false advertising will not cut it."