On the eve of the Government’s big electricity market reform announcement this morning, I chatted in a ‘pop-up’ ‘Mini-Hoon’ with CTU Economist Craig Renney about a CTU proposal for the Government to use the gentailers’ dividends to buy back the privately-held shares in the 51% state-owned Meridian, Mercury and Genesis, if they chose not to build much more power generation capacity to stop rampant inflation.

Craig argues the gentailers chose to generate cash for dividends rather than invest in new renewable capacity for over a decade, which contributed to a sharp spike in prices and is causing energy poverty for households and de-industrialising what is left of Aotearoa’s industrial sector.

We spoke about the arguments for and against such a partial nationalisation, along with why electricity prices had risen and whether the RMA and the oil and gas drilling ban were factors.

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Here’s the charts I referred to in the video above showing:

When dividends were paid instead of investing

Electricity output per capita since 2015

Electricity consumption by sector

Electricity prices indexed to 2015

Electricity generation vs GDP since 2015

Ka kite ano

Bernard

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