The big switch: New Zealand could be saving billions by electrifying households – Image: Rewiring Aotearoa
Electrification: New Zealand could be saving $9 billion a year by 2040 by switching average homes to solar, electric appliances and vehicles, a new report says, while also cutting greenhouse gas emissions and becoming less reliant on imported fossil fuels.
That’s according to Rewiring Aotearoa, a New Zealand independent non-profit charity working on energy, climate, and electrification research. As homes electrified over time, the net savings for the country could reach about $9 billion a year by 2040, says the report.
Two years after Rewiring Aotearoa’s first major piece of research showed that New Zealand was one of the first countries to cross the electrification tipping point, the follow-up has shown that the savings gap between electric homes and cars and gas and petrol equivalents has now doubled.
“The Electric Homes and Vehicles 2026 report provides even stronger evidence that electric appliances and cars running on a combination of the grid, solar and batteries stack up at every level,” says Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey. “Homes save thousands every year. Communities save millions. The country saves billions – all while increasing productivity, improving energy security, creating jobs and slashing emissions.”
Image: Rewiring Aotearoa
New Zealand: Beating volatile fossil fuel prices through electrification
To provide accurate long term representation, the volatile fuel price rises seen in 2026 have not been included in the report.
“The numbers stacked up before the war in the Middle East, but the gap would be even bigger this year due to the price spikes,” he says. “We’ve taken a pretty conservative approach with some other numbers, too, but the gap between these two ends of the spectrum is growing and an all-electric home is $3,000 net better off per year, including upfront costs and interest on a loan, and a net $45,000 better off over 15 years.”
Electric machines like EV’s, solar systems, heat pumps, hot water generators and appliances are more expensive upfront but they require less energy to run. When you exclude upfront costs and interest, an average home using gas and petrol is missing out on bill savings of over $7,500 every year in comparison to electric homes and cars.
Homes aren’t binary. Some already have solar but drive petrol; others have a heat pump but use gas for hot water. But each electric machine brings different savings that all add up.
Home electrification: A lot of a little is a lot
The household part of New Zealand’s energy system is larger than often recognised and is likely the largest energy consuming sector in the country when household transport is captured.
The transport sector is used as an umbrella category for energy use that moves and is not attributed to who uses that energy. But of the approximately five million vehicles on New Zealand roads, around four million park at households, so when they are added, the ‘residential’ section of the energy use pie chart grows significantly.
Households generally pay the highest prices per unit for their energy and are the first to have the technology available to them to switch their energy use to electricity. Manufacturing economies of scale have driven down the costs of heat pumps, electric vehicles, solar panels and batteries faster than many commercial and industrial electrification opportunities (trucks, boats, process heat, etc). And this places households at the forefront of the transformation happening in the energy system.
NAN/Rewiring Aotearoa 29-06-26
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