Politics of Tech: Scott Willis wants to give ‘Green energy’ new meaning

Welcome to Politics of Tech, a regular feature from Caffeine in which we speak to the politicians shaping our country’s future and hear their pitch for building a vibrant, future-facing economy.

Following our chat with Labour’s Deborah Russell, the second cab off the rank is the Green Party’s Scott Willis. 

When asked what he saw as the key issues holding back startups in New Zealand currently, he pointed first to capital while also neatly folding in the broader Green Party message of tax reform.   

“You can see that the capital for startups is not easily available, and we know that, and that’s where we need a reform of our tax system with a capital gain tax or wealth tax pushing capital towards more productive spaces and the types of credits that you can get.”

But beyond giving startups access to equitable capital, Willis argues that by remaking our energy market, we can take ‘Green Energy’ to a whole new level.  

Energy is upstream of every industry in the country, with cost spikes flowing into every other product and service. 

Providing access to cheap, abundant, electric energy from renewable sources can allow businesses—particularly in the deep tech space—to attempt much bolder things without the same spike in cost and emissions. 

“We know that electricity and access to energy is key to a functioning economy. We can’t afford oil, gas, or coal because of the increasing greenhouse gas emissions, which exacerbates the climate crisis and gives us much more expensive challenges.” 

The most obvious and spectacular example of energy innovation in New Zealand currently is undoubtedly Openstar and its quest for nuclear fusion. Willis has visited the Wellington-based facility and came away as dazzled as the rest of us. 

“I’ve been impressed with the progress and the way that they’ve been able to draw in funding. That’s an incredible innovation. We should not ignore that type of blue sky thinking, and we should keep looking at that because it has the potential to bring us to energy abundance.” 

But while he lauds the ambition of startups like OpenStar, the Green MP thinks a renewed focus on more effectively delivering existing technology could have the most tangible effect. 

Willis argues that a key innovation for New Zealand would be disrupting the consolidated energy market, which still depends on fossil fuel companies and has integrated generators and retailers. 

He has a plan to do it. The Electricity Industry (Separation of Generation and Retail Businesses) Amendment Bill, is currently waiting to be drawn from a biscuit tin. 

(Politics sidenote: Parliament essentially has a lucky dip system that allows non-ministers to bring legislation forward. MPs put proposed bills into a pool drawn randomly on certain days. The lots, called ‘members bills’, are drawn out of a literal biscuit tin bought from Deka in the 1970s, and it’s one of my favourite parts of our democracy.) 

It would separate the energy generation market from the energy retail market, essentially breaking up four gentailers' stranglehold on power distribution. 

“Everyone is paying more for their electricity than they need to, and it keeps fossil fuels in the system. They control the whole market. They are able to trade internally with the generation retail arms, and that doesn’t enable any other innovative start-up access,” argues Willis.

“It doesn’t make any sense for a merchant generator to come here to try and find a market because there is no market, they have to build any competition. So the bill's purpose is to allow that market to thrive and be transparent so that we can have the other startups that are smaller scale but innovative to participate.” 

While Willis believes access to abundant cheap energy would have massive flow-on effects, he also argues that another kind of investment is even more crucial: research and sciences.

New Zealand has long lagged behind its peers in R&D investment, with under 1% of GDP spent when most peer nations spend double that. 

“I think people don’t necessarily understand how extensive our network of science experts was and how they interacted to create a healthy ecosystem. We’re seeing that being gutted at the moment and it’s not just the pure science or the pure research that gets produced, it’s the conversations that happen all around it.”

The National Science Challenges ended in June. They were a decade-long series of projects that invested over half a billion dollars in key areas of research tackling New Zealand’s great economic, environmental, and societal problems. 

There is currently no plan to renew the funding or replace the NSC with a new stable level of support. 

Willis says ensuring we have a thriving science and research sector is upstream of having a thriving startup and tech sector because all great innovations can’t come to market without someone doing hard knowledge work to discover them in the first place.

“We need to invest in research that contributes to sustainability through innovation, knowledge creation, adoption of appropriate technologies, and working together on changes and practices, building a culture that supports innovation.” 

“We want to ensure that there is funding for pure research and that research is distributed. So that we build that support in the ecosystem for startups to harness the knowledge and the capacity we have.”