(Re)charging communities?: Three energy futures for Aotearoa/New Zealand

Energy systems and institutions form a foundational but largely invisible element of modern life. We depend on poles, wires and fuels now more than ever to power our social and economic activities in our post-COVID-19 world. The global climate emergency is largely driven by fossil energy CO2, with a sizeable and growing gap between an imagined clean and just energy future and current practice. Like other countries, Aotearoa/New Zealand has struggled to put in place policy to reduce domestic emissions. While its electricity profile is largely renewable, we argue that this masks the degree to which this is underpinned by a historical state-led energy governance regime, where the current regime is ill equipped to address the persistent challenges of transport electrification and poor building energy performance. In addition, we posit that the energy system has cumulative and distributive impacts that are environmentally, economically and socially significant, and that Aotearoa/New Zealand's energy transition will require new socio-cultural infrastructures in addition to physical ones. Future energy paths are contingent on struggles between established incumbents, their role in shaping narratives of the possible, and the degree to which policy actors are open to new actors and ideas; many paths are possible. Drawing on energy transitions scholarship and four years of research into grassroots energy actors in Aotearoa/New Zealand, we outline three possible energy futures: business as usual; utility-led; and inclusive. We show Aotearoa/New Zealand is likely to follow a utility-led transition and identify the drivers in terms of agency and institutional change that would be necessary to carve out a role for local and community energy within this scenario.