I once had a partner who judged the temperature on whether he needed to wear two pairs of pants or not. Auckland, he said, was one pants. Dunedin, two pants.
Now I live with Greg, Dunedin-born and raised. Every winter I hear nostalgic reminiscences of cycling uphill into sleet on the paper round, or the frost which turned jeans into planks on the clothesline.
Whenever I complain about the cold, Greg will say: “This is nothing. In Dunedin yadda yadda yadda” – (sorry, my attention wandered there for a minute).
It is true that I never had to pull on sub-zero jeans as a child. I do remember winter swimming classes in Hunterville, a stoic town in the foothills of the Central Plateau. As eight-year-olds we were marched from school to the public swimming pool, the pride of the town, dug out by farmers in the 1960s. The grass underfoot was crunchy with frost as our teacher joked about ‘breaking the ice’ in the pool.
Dunedin, you have my sympathy. I hate to imagine your power bills. Last month mine contained a truly eye-watering figure, the largest sum I have ever had to fork out to keep the lights on.
One reason my power bill went up so much was a Commerce Commission review of line charge prices. This is set every five years, and in April the Commission bumped the price. They blamed inflation, interest rate increases and network upgrades.
This might account for part of the increase, but not all of it. Line charges account for less than 30 percent of the total invoice.
In fact, New Zealand power bills have soared by 20 percent in just two years, and this has had dire human consequences. In the year to April 2026, according to Consumer NZ, 19 percent of households have cut back on food or other essentials to pay a power bill. One in five families went to bed early to stay warm. More than 30,000 households had their power cut because they couldn’t pay, and one in 10 people had to take out a loan to settle a power bill. A quarter of New Zealanders struggle to pay their power bills.
Let that sink in. A quarter!
In a country powered almost entirely by cheap renewable energy, this is obscene. In the fourth quarter of 2025, 96.4 percent of New Zealand’s electricity came from hydropower, geothermal power and wind energy. Last time I checked, water and wind is free.
A recent OECD report reveals that between 2018 and 2025, New Zealanders paid the fourth highest average wholesale power prices out of 25 OECD countries. Only three paid more – the Greeks, Italians and Irish.
Let’s look at just one of these poor bastards – Ireland, heavily dependent on imported natural gas, an expensive fossil fuel. Irish consumers are also coping with unchecked ‘digital infrastructure’, eating more power than all urban households combined. Their woes are inspiring headlines like this in the Irish Times – Ireland’s data centre strain a ‘cautionary tale’ for rest of world, UN says.
New Zealand’s power prices “are now uncomfortably high in international comparison”, according to the OECD report, “far higher than in Nordic countries with similarly renewables-dominated systems”.
In New Zealand, four gentailers – Meridian, Contact, Genesis and Mercury – dominate the market. They are doing just fine, thank you. Meridian recorded a net profit after tax of $227 million for the six months ending 31 December 2025.
These giants are set up to benefit shareholders, not consumers, and the big four gave away billions over the decade to 2025, money which could have paid for cheaper renewable power sources.
Building and feeding a coal-fired plant is a ridiculously dirty and expensive way of generating electricity. Gas is also ruinously expensive, especially shipped and imported Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). New generation power sources, on the other hand, are cheap to run because the fuel they use is free.
When our national grid runs out of our usual cheap energy sources, pricey fossil fuels make up the difference, and the highest-priced bid sets the spot price. As Consumer NZ explains, this means that when New Zealand runs out of renewable electricity, “the generators make more money”.
“There’s little financial incentive for gentailers to invest in new generation, because of the way our wholesale market works.”
We desperately need energy reform, or at the very least, a plan, as AI looms – or else the most vulnerable families in New Zealand will be subsidising this rapacious energy (and water) sucker like Irish consumers do today. Global ‘AI-related use’ consumes more electricity than Belgium.
Consumer NZ is so worried about our unfair power bills they are campaigning for power prices to reflect their true cost. If that sounds reasonable, check out their online petition: ‘End high power prices now’.
Solar is the cheapest energy source of all, and next year the sun will probably overtake coal as the world’s biggest electricity-generation source. New Zealand has watched from the sidelines as Australian solar booms, fed by extraordinarily effective government subsidies. Our government’s inertia may soon be over, as solar becomes an election issue and National develops, in Chris Hipkin’s words, a “sudden interest”. • Jenny Nicholls
