Dawn Chorus: Electricity investment drought

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.