Blueskin Wind Farm
Blueskin Energy Ltd (BEL) is a charitable company wholly owned by the Blueskin Resilient Communities Trust. BEL is involved in a range of energy initiatives (energy hardship alleviation and low carbon housing) in Otago and worked to develop New Zealand’s first community led wind farm. The community wind power project was motivated by a community desire […]
Blueskin Energy Network
The Blueskin Energy Network is a peer to peer community electricity retail service started by Blueskin Energy Ltd in 2017. It is a community-commercial collaboration with YES Power, and BEL aims for it to become fully community owned and operated over time. YES Power provides the back room retail service and trading algorithm. BEN electricity retail is available […]
Why is collecting data important to growing healthy community energy sectors through ownership of renewable generation assets
A healthy, growing community energy sector supports communities to take ownership of assets that provide renewable generation, operation, and demand management services. This allows each community to: Eliminate energy hardship by providing high engagement in energy generation and use. This engagement provides opportunities to develop retrofit projects that are focussed on making homes efficient and […]
New Zealand Aotearoa Community Energy Dataset
What is the New Zealand Aotearoa Community Energy Dataset (NZACED) This is a dataset of local or community owned renewable energy initiatives in New Zealand. It ranges from consumer trust owned networks, to community and Iwi owned renewable energy and energy efficiency projects and municipal projects. To provide some context for the current state of […]
Sustainable Taranaki
Address: New Plymouth Contact phone: Contact email: info@sustainabletaranaki.org.nz Website: https://www.sustainabletaranaki.org.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SustainableTaranaki/ Sustainable Taranaki Works To Inspire And Support People, Businesses And Communities To Value The Environment And Act To Prioritise Sustainability. Being a community-based organization working with and supporting our communities: Empowering people through education and advocacy. Providing advice and support in an accessible and […]
Potential Architecture
Address: New Plymouth Contact phone: 020 40 222 609 Contact email: catherine@potentialarchitecture.co.nz Website: https://www.potentialarchitecture.co.nz/ Our Mission is for our houses to be high performance, beautiful, inspiring, energy efficient, and sustainable buildings for healthy living. We recognize that there are many subjective points of view. We are all different and diverse, with different needs. This means we take […]
Our Response to Covid-19
Community Energy Network (CEN) supports the Government in its tough new policies and a large financial support package released in the wake of COVID-19. We applaud the people-first approach while recognising that we will all need to be open to change and lean into innovative approaches to provide solutions for our communities in the coming […]
A Fresh Energy Hardship Framework
CEN Introduction What do we need to do to eliminate energy hardship in Aotearoa/New Zealand? The framework discussion below is the second blog of two written by Ian McChesney. It neatly highlights the key areas for discussion and emphasises the need to improve the way we develop consensus on complex issues that deeply impact the […]
Redefining how we measure energy hardship
This ‘10% threshold’ discussion below has been written by Ian McChesney. Ian is deeply experienced in the community energy sector, having co-founded CEN member CEA in 1994. He was CEA’s representative on the forerunner to CEN (EECN – Energy Efficiency Community Network) and has recently worked with CEN on their response to the Healthy Homes […]
Energy Democracy
Energy democracy is the idea that New Zealand can shift from a centralised, top-down provision of energy to one that prioritises deep engagement and local decision-making for communities to literally “own” their energy network. The reason this is so important is not only because it helps to give a resilient supply of electricity, but it […]