Pitched as the Green Party's plan to break New Zealand's last dependence on fossil-fuelled power and lock in cheaper, cleaner electricity by the end of the decade.

The Policy: Green Party Renewable Electricity Plan — December 2024 →

What it does:

• Sets a headline goal of 100% clean renewable electricity by 2030, several years ahead of the long-standing official aspiration, alongside bans on new fossil-fuelled power stations and on new fossil-fuel extraction.
• Sits inside the Greens' wider emissions plan, *He Ara Anamata*, launched in December 2024, which the party says would cut net emissions 35% by 2030 and 47% by 2035 against 2020 levels, with subsidies for rooftop solar, batteries and home energy efficiency.
• Builds on an already high base: MBIE reports 85.5% of electricity was renewable in 2024, down from 88.1% in 2023 after a dry year, with hydro, geothermal and a fast-growing wind fleet doing most of the work.
• Relies on a large build-out of new generation: Transpower counts a pipeline of around 32 GW of generation and storage in development — roughly three times today's installed capacity — with solar-plus-battery enquiries jumping to 6 GW.
• The party's binding statutory target in its energy policy is actually to end fossil-fuel use by 2035, with the 2030 electricity figure positioned as the stretch goal that gets the country most of the way there.

The result: The 2030 goal is technically reachable but contested on cost and reliability, and as an opposition policy it is a pledge rather than legislation. Green co-leader and energy spokesperson Chlöe Swarbrick frames it as proof the country can act "in the best interest of both the environment and the economy." Supportive modelling by Professor Alan Brent of Victoria University of Wellington finds a fully renewable grid feasible if committed wind, solar and storage are built, and argues it would remove the need for imported gas. The sharpest critique is not partisan but technical: the Interim Climate Change Committee and the Climate Change Commission advised that pushing from 99% to 100% by overbuilding avoids only a tiny amount of emissions at very high cost, and recommended retaining a small amount of gas peaking for "dry year" security; energy economists warned the same. The OECD's 2026 survey likewise stresses keeping power affordable, secure and resilient through the transition.

The impacts to watch:

• Dry-year risk: winter 2024 showed the stakes, with wholesale prices spiking toward $800/MWh when hydro storage hit multi-year lows and gas tightened — the exact scenario the last few percent of renewables must cover.
• Consenting and grid speed: the target hinges on fast-tracking wind, solar and transmission; delays in resource consents or Transpower upgrades would push 2030 out of reach.
• Storage build: modelling points to large long-duration storage needs (a possible pumped-hydro scheme or many smaller projects), the cost and siting of which remain unresolved.
• Affordability trade-off: chasing the final percentage points could raise system costs that flow through to power bills unless paired with the efficiency and solar subsidies the plan promises.