The Kākā by Bernard Hickey
Choruses
Dawn Chorus: Electricity investment drought
0:00
-7:40

Paid episode

The full episode is only available to paid subscribers of The Kākā by Bernard Hickey

Dawn Chorus: Electricity investment drought

CTU, First Union report says gentailers have paid $3.7b in excess dividends since 2014, which starved the industry of capital to invest in new renewable capacity; They call on the Govt to invest more
7

TLDR: A fresh report out this morning has found the big four electricity gentailers, three of which are still 51%-owned by the Government, have paid themselves $3.7b in excess dividends since 2014.

A new report calls on the Government to lodge resolutions at the gentailers’ shareholder meetings to channel profits into new renewable capacity, and use any dividends to buy back gentailer shares. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The Kākā

The analysis by unions and climate activists argues those 100%-plus payout ratios starved the industry of capital to invest in more renewable electricity and they want the Government to both force ‘their’ gentailers to invest more, and to impose a windfall tax on other shareholders in Meridian, Mercury, Genesis and Contact.

Elsewhere in the news overnight here and overseas:

  • the Democrats won the UN Senate;

  • FTX went bankrupt in a potential Lehman moment for the crypto sector; and,

  • Joe Biden and Xi Jinping are due to hold a summit in person in Bali later today.

Paying subscribers can read and hear more analysis below the paywall fold and in the podcast above. I’ll also provide more updates through the day in the chat section of the Substack App and will cover the post-cabinet news conference this afternoon.

Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to The Kākā by Bernard Hickey to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

The Kākā by Bernard Hickey
Choruses
The latest daily snapshot of the news, detail, insight and analysis on geo-politics, the global economy, business, markets and the local political economy for citizens and decision-makers of Aotearoa-NZ.