Pitched as a plan to "lower bills, cut emissions and put power back in the hands of New Zealanders", the Green Party's 2026 energy policy would create a publicly owned power company, Kiwipower, to fill gaps the party says the electricity market has failed to fill.

📋 Greens: Power for all of us (Kiwipower), July 2026 →

What it does

• Sets up Kiwipower as a publicly owned Crown entity to invest in new renewable "firming" capacity, the backup power needed in dry years, such as geothermal, batteries, biomass and pumped hydro.
• Has Kiwipower contract existing firming capacity, with the big power companies required to provide a share, and make it available to independent retailers on fair terms, 1News reported.
• Funds Kiwipower with $980 million over four years, about $100 million a year for operations and $142 million a year for new investment, paid from the party's proposed tax on the super-rich, Interest.co.nz reported.
• Adds zero-interest loans for solar and batteries, a renters' right to solar and legal plug-in solar, a wider Warmer Kiwi Homes scheme that includes moving homes off gas, $200 million for community-owned energy, solar on more than half of public homes within four years and $80 million for renewable energy in Māori housing.
• Carries projected costs of about $2.1 billion in operating spending and just over $1 billion in capital to the end of 2031, 1News reported. Infometrics economist Brad Olsen said the costings appeared reasonable on their stated assumptions, though the review did not model wider effects on the energy market.

The debate

• Co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said Kiwipower would deal with the dry-year problem without a "billion-dollar LNG facility", the import terminal the government supports.
• ACT energy spokesperson Simon Court said New Zealand had relied on state-owned electricity before, that it did not deliver the investment needed and that taxpayers were left carrying the risk.
• The Spinoff, summarising BusinessDesk's reporting, noted key design questions were left open, including how much capacity the big companies would have to hand over and how prices would be set.