BUDGET 2012: EECA to have greater business focus
The government's energy efficiency arm, EECA, will spend $2.5 million more next year targeting businesses.
In today's budget, Energy and Resources Minister Phil Heatley says there is significant potential to reduce energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as increase productivity, by improving the energy efficiency of businesses.
The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority's business energy efficiency programme will be boosted by $2.5m in the next year, and more funding is likely to be found from other areas in coming years.
Initiatives such as making commercial chillers more energy-efficient might save, on average, $30m a year.
As part of EECA changes to boost business funding, grants for efficient water heating will be replaced with "an information based programme".
Mr Heatley says: "In New Zealand we are in the fortunate position of being able to generate the majority of our electricity from renewable resources, making it less crucial for the government to financially support renewable energy at a household level."
The biodiesel grant scheme will also end, as scheduled.
As expected, no new money will be spent on the government's $347 million home insulation scheme.
However, savings in the 2010-2011 year means an extra 41,000 more houses will be done.
The EECA-administered Warm Up New Zealand: Heat Smart scheme will now insulate 230,000 homes.
The government statement did not quantify the savings.
Mr Heatley says a government agreement with the Maori Party means 20,000 of the 41,000 extra homes would be "low-income homes".
Back to home
Back to top
Print
Latest
NBR SERVICES
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Sign up for NBR subscriber content or email alerts
Comments and questions3
The ending of the biodiesel grants scheme is just another example of this government screwing small innovative businesses in NZ. The Australians have a similar scheme that runs for another ten years. The message is clear. if you have a bright idea, and want some government encouragement take your idea to Australia. Don't waste your time in NZ.
Come on Lindsay, tell every one that your business relies on the subsidy to operate. Plenty of businesses would love a subsidy, but just because your subsidy is removed does not equate to being screwed.
Biofuels all over the world rely on subsidies or mandatory offtake reqirements to compete with the scale of the oil industry. Labour had a perfectly workable mandatory offtake scheme in place, but National (lead by Brownlee) canned it for idealogical reasons after winning power in 2008 and promised instead to replace it with a subsidy scheme. Brownlee then put in place a three year dollar limited scheme which the Parlimentary Commissioner for the Environment said was too short term to attract investors. Unfortunately she was proved right. It was also too short term to allow for the two years it took to build and start up a world class innovative plant based on 100% NZ technology. If a subsidy scheme is so bad how come the Australians have put in place a ten year scheme?