Hancock's blog

Anna's explained how New Zealand's not doing so well where other countries are.

This week I ask her what's missing in our market.

So NZ's not too flash at community energy development – who is? We know about the Scandinavians and the Scots, but it turns out there are a few real surprises …

We're talking to Anna Berka, a Massey University lecturer with an interest in community energy.

She was responsible for the incredible New Zealand Aotearoa Community Energy Dataset, a register of all NZ local or community owned renewable energy initiatives.

It took eight weeks to get clear about what we're discussing, but now we're into it and how NZ's doing. Not great, unfortunately.

We're talking to Anna Berka, a Massey University lecturer with an interest in community energy.

She was responsible for the incredible New Zealand Aotearoa Community Energy Dataset, a register of all NZ local or community owned renewable energy initiatives.

My third sceptical challenge to Anna was whether community energy projects were inefficient because they're subscale. She says this might have been true once but maybe not anymore.

We're talking to Anna Berka, a Massey University lecturer with an interest in community energy. She was responsible for the incredible New Zealand Aotearoa Community Energy Dataset, a register of all NZ local or community owned renewable energy initiatives. My second sceptical challenge to Anna was the effectiveness of community energy subsidies. They aren't always effective. But she tells us they can be – and that's important.

We're talking to Anna Berka, a Massey University lecturer with an interest in community energy.

She was responsible for the incredible New Zealand Aotearoa Community Energy Dataset, a register of all NZ local or community owned renewable energy initiatives.

This week we talk about how to simplify and de-risk community energy initiatives by sharing the experiences of early projects. Turns out that it's not as easy as I'd thought.

We're talking to Anna Berka, a Massey University lecturer with an interest in community energy.

She was responsible for the incredible New Zealand Aotearoa Community Energy Dataset, a register of all NZ local or community-owned renewable energy initiatives in New Zealand.

Before talking about what's going on in NZ and overseas, I challenged Anna about whether community projects are really capable of complex project management.

We're talking to Anna Berka, a Massey University lecturer with an interest in community energy.

She was responsible for the incredible New Zealand Aotearoa Community Energy Dataset, a register of all NZ local or community owned renewable energy initiatives.

I thought I'd see if I understood the links with economic development and capital formation – and just as well I checked.

She was responsible for the incredible New Zealand Aotearoa Community Energy Dataset, is a register of all the country's local or community owned renewable energy initiatives, covering everything from consumer trust owned networks to community and Iwi-owned renewable energy and energy efficiency projects.

To help ensure we understand what "community energy" is, I tried to clarify a bunch of things that I didn't think qualified. It turns out I'm not the expert I thought I was.

Well, I learned quite a bit here

We're talking to Anna Berka, a Massey University lecturer with an interest in Community Energy.

Anna's been studying and supporting the development of NZ community energy for many years.

Before we got stuck in, I thought I'd better check I actually understand what "community energy" is. Turns out that I didn't.