Queenstown, Wānaka and the surrounding region have committed to one of the world’s most ambitious climate targets and pledged to create a carbon zero visitor economy by 2030.
More than 150 people attended the inaugural Electrifying Queenstown event to try to figure out how their businesses could play a part in getting there.
It basically all boils down to this: everything that can be electrified needs to be electrified — and quickly.
It is great to have a bold target to aim for and it was inspiring to see so many local businesses keen to learn more about the economic and environmental benefits of electrification, but as renowned electricity lover Thomas Edison said, vision without execution is just hallucination and right now the region is a long way off track and lagging behind a number of other places.
For example, there are 42 electric public buses running in Palmerston North; the Victorian state government in Australia has said gas connections are not allowed to be put in new homes; Oslo offers free parking and no congestion charging for electric vehicles;
in Victoria, Canada, people offered e-bike rebates that varied depending on their income reduced their car usage by an average of 49km per week.
At present, Queenstown’s bus fleet will be fully electrified by 2035; gas connections are still going into new builds, locking in emissions and more expensive energy for another 15 years or so; and there do not appear to be any tangible incentives being offered to help to speed up the adoption of electric vehicles.
So how do we move from talking to walking? I am an orchardist so I love low-hanging fruit, and the lowest-hanging fruit is the electrification of the approximately 25,000 homes in the region.
New Zealand is one of the first countries to reach what is called the electrification tipping point, so if you are building a new home, electric water heating, space heating and cooking is not just much better for the environment, it is also much cheaper than the fossil fuel equivalents .
If you own a home in this beautiful part of the world and your appliances or vehicles are coming to the end of their life, your next purchasing decision should be electric for the same reasons.
Things get slightly more complicated when it comes to business as there are a range of different machines required, but electrification has worked extremely well for me. At Forest Lodge Orchard, we needed 21 different machines to grow and sell our cherries and I found electric equivalents for all of them.
Fuelled with rooftop solar and grid electricity, this saves about $40,000 per year in energy costs and reduces my carbon emissions by over 95%. My goal is to turn my farm into a power plant, put my battery bank to even better use and eventually have a negative power bill.
Electrification is likely to have a bigger impact on the climate than almost any other decision you make, whether as a household or a business.
Surveys continue to show New Zealanders think recycling is one of the best ways to solve climate change. Unfortunately, that is wishful thinking and while it is good to see more local businesses reducing, re-using and recycling, the burning of single-use fossil fuels has a much greater impact on the environment.
If we do not speed up the electrification, and usage, of public transport, we will not reach our climate goals. If we keep allowing gas connections in our new homes and do not install more rooftop solar, we will not reach our goals.
If we do not have enough electric buses, trucks, vans, cars, bikes and scooters, we will not reach our goals, and if homes and businesses do not have access to low-interest finance to help fund this transition, we will not reach our goals.
But we really want to reach this goal. Queenstown has an opportunity to show the world it is possible to create a fully electric city and there will be major benefits as a destination if we can.
Rewiring New Zealand will help, but we need more of everything and we need to pick up the pace.
— Mike Casey is a cherry orchardist and chief executive of Rewiring Aotearoa.
