Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Mike Casey: Rewiring Aotearoa CEO on the Queenstown Electrification Accelerator project

Transcript

Mike Casey: Rewiring Aotearoa CEO on the Queenstown Electrification Accelerator project · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: A group called Rewiring Altiera. They're posing a serious challenge
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: to the residents of Queenstown. They want to see the
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: city become the world's most electrified destination. To help with this,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: they've launched the Queenstown Electrification Accelerator to help homes and
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: businesses save money while switching to electric. Mike Cases, the CEO,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: with me this morning, get a.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Mike, Good morning, Ryan.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: How are you very well? Thank you, good to have
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: you on the program. First of all, your group, Rewiring Altier.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Why have you started this group? Where do you get
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: your funding? What's going on with it?
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah? So I'm an originally electric cherry farmer from Central Otago.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: So I electrified my entire farm twenty one electric machines
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: and started jumping up and down about the savings opportunities
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: on farm and eventually expand into creating or helping to
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: create an NGO that is funded by a lot of
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: philanthropers in New Zealand now, which is all about helping
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: the rest of New Zealand to sort of realize the
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: huge savings potential from converting off Saudi Arabian molecules and
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: onto New Zealand homegrown electrons.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Why have you picked Queenstown. Why are you picking on Queenstown.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: I We're not picking on Queenstown. We think Queenstown is
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: possibly the best opportunity we have to start doing the
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: real world action to start trying out all the things
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: that need to happen to massively or quickly electrify a
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: particular place. We think the business community is really aligned
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: under their carbon zero twenty thirty targets that were set
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: by the council. The councilor is really aligned and we
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: have a lot of very active community members in the
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: space that are super excited about the opportunity that's available.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Queenstown has some of the highest energy prices in New Zealand,
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: so it's a really good place to start. And also
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: it's got a lot of problems with potential resilience issues
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: from things like the Southern Alpine fault. So having Queenstown
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: generate and store a lot of its energy itself and
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: having machines in Queenstown that can use the energy that
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: it can generate and store itself is pretty good start.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: It sounds like a great idea. The only problem is
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: how much it costs to actually do that right. I mean,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: otherwise we'd all have solar panels on our roofs totally.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: And so this is one of the key things about
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: why we're focusing very closely now on a particular community
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: is we want to make sure that everything from group
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: buying deals are set up to going and negotiating on
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: behalf of the community for things like financing deals. One
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: of the biggest barriers to overcome is that upfront capital
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: cost of say putting solar panels on your roof and
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: a battery in your garage and getting gas out of
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: the home. But we're now at a position, especially in
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: places like Queenstown, where the capital repayments and the interest
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: repayments on financing new electric technology may end up actually
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: being cheaper than your current energy costs. So it means
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: people can save money from day one.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Do you think that, because I've looked at doing this
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: myself in Auckland, But do you think people just maybe
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: aren't aware of that fact yet and once you tell
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: them they will do something.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Well, I've got a challenge to you. My secret goal
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: has been to get solar panels on like Hoskin's roof,
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: but maybe I should change that to riot and we'll
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: sit down together and I will run you through the details,
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: and I reckon, within half an hour to forty five minutes,
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: we can convince you of the economics of it. And yes, Wade,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: do you know what?
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: It would be easy to get me across the line
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: and someone hopefully will throw in something free and I'll
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: do it. I'll do it tomorrow. Hosking is a different
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: kettle of fish because I don't know, I feel like
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: putting solar panels on his roof would be some sort
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: of existential crisis for him.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: You know, I think at the end of the day,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: like I'm doing a lot of this with farmers of
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: New Zealand, and you know, there's a lot of people who,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: you know, might approach this with a level of suspicion,
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: and I think rightly so, because there has been a
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: lot of virtue signaling in this space for a long time.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: But even now I reckon, you know, you give him
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: a spreadsheet and he looks at it, He'll be like, Okay,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: I can see the value in doing this.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: The other problem we've had, I think, with climate change
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: and with renewable energy in general, is just that there's
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: there's people who just come across as tosses who espouse it. Now,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: there's not you might obviously, but I'm just saying it's
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: it's had a bad rap I think with Middle New Zealand.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Is that fair to say.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: I think that's one hundred percent fair to say. And
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: I've caught my fierce ere of flack as a result
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: of that. You know, you kind of get tired with
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: the same brush. But when you start to talk about
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: economics rather than emissions and start talking about, you know,
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: the benefits to the actual individual from doing this rather
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: than the you know so much about, say climate and
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: the emissions associated with that, you start to win people over.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: And I've been doing it one farmer at a time
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: on farm. I'm off the field days today very excited
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: because there's some major packages that are being announced for
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: solar and electrification of farms in general. And yeah, now
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: it's about doing it at the same thing at the
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: residential level, starting in Queenstown.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Good on your mike, And I think that nothing ventured,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: nothing gained, and what's the harm. You know, someone wants
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: to put a solar panel on their roof, who cares
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: they're not paying for it? And that I think is
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: the important message in all of this Mike, thank you
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: very much for coming on the program. For more from
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live to news talks
• 5:00
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• 5:03
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