Renewables

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• Distinguish between real pollutants and carbon dioxide - carbon dioxide is a vital and necessary greenhouse gas crucial for plant growth and human survival.
• Major investments in infrastructure will not depend on the anti-global warming hypothesis for their economic viability. (Hydro power and geothermal power stands on its own feet.) (more here)

• Ensure that all major capital projects are tested against sustainable alternatives such as energy efficiency, fuel switching, renewable generation, load shifting and distributed generation.
• Require energy retailers to buy or generate a proportion of their sales from renewable resources.
• Introducing a carbon charge on fossil fuels, and using the revenue to reduce income tax on the bottom band, for everyone. (more here)

• Labour will investigate and develop new electricity system structures that can deal with higher proportions of variable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, including homeowners selling surplus electricity back into the national grid.
• Labour will continue to provide support for the installation of solar water heating systems in homes, and promote its installation in new houses.Labour will investigate the feasibility of installing solar water heating in public buildings (e.g. 

  hospitals, schools and marae), and will encourage the commercial building sector to do so as well.Labour will work with Canterbury local authorities to ensure that solar water heating is widely used in the post-earthquake rebuilding of homes and commercial buildings.
• Labour will explore options for marine power.
• Labour will promote small scale renewable electricity generation for rural and isolated locations.

  Labour will therefore direct Solid Energy not to proceed with its liquid fuels lignite mining proposal. (more here)

   

• Prohibit fracking and further oil exploration and instead invest in the development and establishment of widespread, small-scale, sustainable energy generation by households and communities, such as solar, wind, and micro-hydro.  Imported wind and ocean turbines are not a sustainable alternative.
• Invest in the development of widespread, small scale sustainable energy generation such as solar, wind and micro-hydro by households and communities.
• Work towards a coal free Aotearoa within 20 years with just transition to other work for workers employed in coal mining.
• Stop the privatisation of energy companies. Our energy companies should be used as frontline organisations for the development and introduction of renewable energy technology that will be publicly owned and used for the public good. (more here)

• Implement a renewable energy strategy to address our reliance on fossil fuels; to be developed in consultation with iwi; and which establishes a cross-party inquiry to investigate our response to the peak oil crisis. (more here)

Not set out on their website.

• Remove regulatory barriers, including legislative barriers to encourage new electricity generation using hydro, geothermal, wind and tide, where economically sustainable. (more here)
• Develop a National Energy Strategy fund all stages of investment of significant NZ inventions of new sustainable energy forms to ensure the innovation is not lost to NZ and is implemented as soon as practicable.
• Resist new big-scale hydro-electricity schemes that require the damming of untouched ‘wild rivers’ such as the Mokihinui. (more here)