Pūngao | Energy

Reliable access to energy is essential for keeping everyone warm when it’s cold, cool when it’s hot, helping us to preserve and cook our food, and supports almost all aspects of our modern lives.

Sustainability

Shifting towards energy sources that are sustainable, renewable and locally produced is one way that we can locally help to reduce our carbon emissions. Identifying options to support our community to move to renewable, local energy sources is part of our planned response to climate change through our current Climate Emergency Action Framework and the Climate Change and Resilience Strategy in development.

Existing legislation tasks Councils with different roles in the provision of energy, and is an area where we may consider further action is required, after hearing from our communities.

Council wants to support the provision of a range of sustainable energy options for our community, and we want to know what this looks like for you.

Resilience of supply in an emergency

Resilience of energy supply in an emergency is also an important part of considering our community’s energy needs and resources. We want our power system to be as resilient as possible in the face of different types of civil emergency, such as an earthquake or severe weather event.

While residential access to energy will be important, in an emergency event it is likely that many of our public services, such as health services, will require prioritised access to energy. Technological and social changes mean that losing power and telecommunications following an emergency event can result in severe limitations in electronic communication and limited access to money. Power is one of several functions that are part of a critical infrastructure system that will need to be managed in the event of an emergency.

We want your input about what you want council to prioritise in relation to energy. Some ideas are:

• encouraging energy providers to offer sustainable energy in our district
• partnering with others to facilitate power supply
• resilience preparedness to ensure our communities have access to power following an emergency event.

Have your say has now closed for this topic.

View the ideas that were shared below:

1. He māharahara ōu mō te whai wāhi ki te pūngao toitū, māmā te utu i tō tātou rohe?
   Do you have concerns about access to affordable, sustainable energy in our district?
2. Me aha hoki te Kaunihera hei tautoko i te whai whāhi ki te pūngao?
   What else could Council do to support access to energy?