Hughes Gareth; Tisch LindsayGARETH HUGHES (Green): Before I seek the call I would like to seek leave for the vote on Part 3 to be taken separately.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Leave is sought for the question on Part 3 to be taken as a separate vote. The Green Party is seeking leave to do that. Is there any objection to that course of action? There is no objection. That will happen when we come to the vote.GARETH HUGHES (Green): I would like to rise to support Parts 1 2 and 4 of this bill but note the Green Party's opposition to Part 3 which I am glad the Committee can take a separate vote on.This legislation is called the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. The other matters are pretty uncontroversial: we support the idea that the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) should be able to access other energy-related levies. It was perhaps not the best way to structure it—that it specifically looked at only electricity levies. It makes sense to wrap it all in one organisation so we have a true leadership position in the New Zealand economy working with businesses no matter what the energy is. Obviously if you are looking at electrons or kilowatt hours of electricity you do not discern where it comes from: gas renewables etc. It makes sense; equally so when it comes to the gas levy and when it comes to the secondary networks" definition which is contained in those Parts 1 2 and 4.It is the electric vehicles part that the Green Party does have considerable opposition to. We heard from numerous submitters to the Commerce Committee concerns that the encouraging or allowing of electric vehicles in bus lanes could be detrimental both to bus lanes and also to wider public transport outcomes. To summarise basically many of our bus lanes are full up with buses and if you put electric vehicles in them as well particularly as buses pull in and pull out as they drop off passengers—the risk is that if you add more vehicles to it you are just simply going to clog up the bus lane and it is going to be less effective at doing its primary purpose which is moving a large number of passengers on the buses around our towns and cities.The big debate that we also heard in the select committee was around the enforcement of the bus lanes. This was quite a wide debate that we heard and we canvassed some evidence internationally on how you can signal whether a car is in fact an electric vehicle or not. Other countries have different coloured licence plates different stickers or other forms of identification. The concern we had is that there would be a bit of a dilemma facing councils that would want to minimise non-electric vehicles using bus lanes if they through a by-law made the bus lanes available to electric vehicles. It is twofold. We do not want to see those massive congestion issues but secondly we also do not want people free-riding without an electric vehicle taking advantage of the I guess you could consider it perk or advantage. The problem is that people could get quite upset if they saw the other vehicle in front of them and they knew it was not an electric vehicle or could not easily identify that it was an electric vehicle and you could get road rage.I gave a personal example. I live quite close to a very high-traffic bus lane in Wellington and the council often has cameras erected out the front to try to photograph those cars taking advantage of or abusing the bus lane. But what we heard from the officials is that it is going to be at the councils' expense. If you go to any local government event anywhere up and down the country a key message you hear is that this Parliament gives new obligations new costs to local government without the ability to actually raise extra revenue. I think it is a quite legitimate concern they have and here we are yet again bringing in another obligation. There is not an easy way to stop that free-riding or that dilemma if you do not have those identifications. That is why we have got a concern.If you were going to be promoting electric vehicles which is ostensibly the objective of the energy innovation bill there are a range of other measures you would look at. What we heard in the select committee was that putting electric vehicles in the bus lanes might have a marginal difference but it is very much on the margins; it is not the most effective thing you could do if you truly wanted to drive a step change in the adoption of electric vehicles. It has been fantastic in New Zealand to see their growth from about 700 maybe 3 4 5 years ago to more than 3000 as we heard recently. That is fantastic but that is a drop in the bucket. I believe there are around 70000 new vehicle imports we have in some months—record numbers of vehicle imports and a drop in the bucket when you look at what other developed nations are seeing with the growth of electric vehicles.I was in California recently where the state does not offer just access to high-occupancy vehicle lanes—now remember these are very different to bus lanes which often only go for a small amount of time except for the high-occupancy vehicle lanes. In California there are two dedicated lanes for multiple-passenger vehicles. There you also get a $10000 state credit a $5000 federal tax credit huge amounts of cash investment not just access to high-occupancy vehicle lanes and they have got around 3 to 5 percent if my memory serves me correctly. In the Netherlands I understand it is—Hon Member: 3.GARETH HUGHES: —3 percent the Minister informs me. In the Netherlands we see a penetration of around 17 percent. In fact Germany's and the Netherlands' Parliaments are having debates about whether in fact petrol- and combustion-driven engines should be prohibited in the coming decade which is phenomenal.So other countries are putting much more significant promotion measures and also more significant sticks—for want of a better word—in terms of forward planning and signalling an end to legal sales of combustion motors but also much higher petrol and fuel excise taxes and other forms of feebate measures. So when you look around the world there is a whole bunch of other initiatives from infrastructure electric charging to tax credits to sticks as well. In New Zealand we limit it basically to elimination from the road-user charge and possibly if councils enact it through a by-law access to the bus lanes.My fear is that because we are loading it all on to councils they are going to face pressure from electric-vehicle owners to open up the bus lanes and then the councils are also going to be required to pay for all the enforcement costs. We heard in the committee that we could be talking in the order of tens of thousands of dollars when you look at the camera technology the staff costs from people literally sitting on the side of the road—in 2017; the 21st century—looking at the vehicles and watching. You are going to have to take photographs to scan their licence plate number through the national database because there is no sticker there is no coloured licence plate there is no easy identifier. So it is going to be quite difficult.The Green Party absolutely supports the intent of promoting electric vehicles. We have launched a number of policies over a number of years from investing in modern State high infrastructure from rolling out a network of fast-charging stations from fringe benefit tax changes which are going to drive that corporate procurement which is going to drive that second-hand car market—probably the most effective thing this Parliament could be doing if it wanted to truly drive a step change—through to a cash rebate of $1000 etc. So while we are talking about energy innovation we should be talking about the truly innovative steps we could be making not this and that is why we are voting against Part 3.When you look at the other parts—the gas levies the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Act amendment changes and the "secondary networks" definition—this is not innovative. We heard that again in the committee. There were other steps this Parliament could be taking to adopt that at a time of huge disruption and change when you look at the global energy industry. Recently I was fortunate enough to meet with an official from New York where their Reforming the Energy Vision the REV strategy which they are rolling out in that state is truly bringing transformative change to their energy sector. By prioritising energy efficiency and conservation and smart technologies they are actively reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I will give you Seattle as another example where I have met with officials. At a time when they are the fastest-growing city in the US they have in fact seen an energy consumption decline of around 13 percent because their state and federal policies have driven their utilities to invest in energy efficiency and conservation measures.When I recently launched a paper about how getting to 100 percent renewables could look from some consultants from the Rocky Mountain Institute what they found is that energy-efficiency measures cost in the order of 0.6c per kilowatt hour. Compare that a negawatt—using less electricity—with 8c or more per kilowatt hour for new generation. And that is very cheap comparatively internationally for new hydro and new wind generation—an order of magnitude cheaper for new efficiency and conservation. These are the measures we should be debating instead of just the definition of secondary networks as they relate to say an apartment building. We should be having the conversation about how we can get solar panels on apartments how we can get that apartment car-park using electric vehicles to feed in and discharge into the local electricity grid and to access cheaper hydroelectricity which is often flowing at night at close to negative prices or charging during the day from solar panels on top of the apartment or a nearby business. If we could do that if we could harness a distributed battery network through a network of literally hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles we could be saving consumers money with the peak electricity costs which drives the average wholesale cost which flows through to consumers. We could be reducing the need for coal and oil to be burnt at peak times. It is a fantastic opportunity for New Zealand.So look we welcome Parts 1 2 and 4 of this legislation but we will be voting against Part 3 because we fear it is going to damage public transport in New Zealand and if we looked across the range of initiatives this Parliament could be debating to truly encourage electric vehicles this is not the place you would look."