Policy ranking survey
This survey asks senior leaders with a perspective on energy which policies should shape overarching direction for energy in New Zealand.
It will take you approximately 20 minutes to complete.
Your individual responses are aggregated. Aggregate rankings across all respondents are published after the survey closes — individual answers are never shown. Your name or organisation is collected so responses can be weighted across stakeholder groups in summary analysis — for example to show how different sectors or groups (users, financiers, networks, generators) rated each policy.
New Zealand has moved from one energy crisis to the next: electricity security-of-supply failures in 2024, gas shortages from 2025, and the Iran conflict in 2026 exposing liquid fuel vulnerability. Each was foreseeable. Together they reveal a structural gap — no durable, cross-sector, system-wide energy direction — leaving us reactive rather than resilient, and exposed to global shocks with inadequate domestic buffers.
New Zealand begins from a position of both strength and vulnerability. Renewable electricity supplied around 86% of demand in 2024, placing us among the cleanest power systems in the world. Abundant hydro, geothermal, wind, and solar resources give us a natural advantage. But fossil fuels still supply over half of our primary energy, costing $5–9 billion in imports annually — one of our largest trade deficits.
The challenge isn't cleaning up electricity — it's shifting the large share of non-electricity energy use (transport, industrial heat, process fuels) onto renewable energy, while keeping the system secure and affordable through the transition.
The global energy transition presents the defining opportunity of the 21st century. New Zealand is uniquely positioned to seize this opportunity and deliver a future of lasting national benefit. Our vast, diverse renewable resources offer a generational chance to transition our economy from managing resource scarcity to creating energy abundance.
Overarching direction for energy could serve as an economic blueprint to deliver the clean, secure, and affordable energy foundation required to power the lives of New Zealanders and maximise national value. It would set the direction for how New Zealand efficiently and competitively supplies the heat, mobility, and power needed for a high-wage, high-growth economy. This survey seeks senior leaders' views on the policies that could form the basis of that direction.
There is a huge opportunity to lower energy bills through unlocking investment in homes and businesses, and shifting our energy system to provide energy abundance that genuinely delivers affordability for all New Zealanders.
These three outcomes must be delivered simultaneously and in an integrated way — not traded off against each other:
This policy set focuses only on policies that can be implemented regardless of market structure. Structural reform — generator-retailer separation, market design, ownership models — is a separate and legitimate debate. Keeping it separate makes the survey results more broadly endorsable and more useful to any incoming government.
This policy set is intended as a core grouping that could form the basis for overarching direction on energy. Other key areas — including hydrogen and other emerging technologies — would likely need to be included as part of any longer-term policy roadmap. Any overarching direction would also need to be closely interconnected with climate policies — for example, ETS settings being consistent with the energy transition timeline.
This survey provides a platform for strategic direction, but any overarching plan, strategy or direction will still need key decisions on how far and how fast New Zealand wants to go to achieve these outcomes. The policies included here would need to be anchored in an overarching direction on pace and ambition, with relevant targets or outcomes determining the timing for their implementation.
The policies you'll see have been drawn from a range of sources: existing and proposed Government policies (MBIE), and published reports from independent energy consultants and advocacy groups — including Rewiring Aotearoa, the Business Energy Council, the Sustainable Business Council, the Climate Leaders Coalition, and the New Zealand Green Building Council.
You'll see 22 policies grouped under the three outcomes. For each, mark whether you consider it:
Each policy is tagged by status: Existing, Partially existing & extended, or New. At the end, you can suggest any policies you think are missing.
Required. Individuals can enter their name; representatives should enter their organisation. Used only for stakeholder-group analysis — never displayed in public results.
Use this space to suggest any policies you think should be included in any overarching direction for energy. Optional.
Aggregate policy rankings across all respondents.
Raw data export and management.
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