Feb 2017 Update: Progress! The Electricity Rulings Panel has announced it will hold a full hearing to determine if the solar tax is legal.

Original petition:

The Electricity Authority is empowering electricity companies to penalise households using solar energy in New Zealand. This decision will suffocate our solar industry while keeping us dependent on fossil fuels.

The Electricity Authority ruled that local electricity company Unison was not breaking regulations by charging solar households an extra fee. This is effectively a tax on solar energy that flies in the face of New Zealand’s Paris Climate commitments to phase out fossil fuels.

A tax on solar energy strengthens Big Energy’s hold on New Zealand and weakens our fight against climate change. Households making use of sustainable solar energy should be incentivised, not punished. We need to come together to tell the Energy Minister to overturn this nonsense ruling.

The Electricity Authority claims that homeowners who harness their own solar power have an “artificial advantage” over other customers.

But what’s really artificial is the Authority’s blatant favouritism for dirty fossil fuel power providers.

Just months ago, New Zealand joined the international community’s commitment to phasing out fossil fuels at the Paris Climate Agreement. So why is the Electricity Authority now facilitating Big Energy’s crusade against solar?  

More and more consumers are switching over to solar energy as an alternative to dirty fossil fuels. Big Energy is playing dirty to stop the trend could, and should, render it obsolete. When our government just committed to reducing fossil fuel use, the Electricity Authority shouldn’t be stifling investment and innovation in solar energy. We need to call on the Energy Minister to make things right.