AWARDS FINALIST: Contact Energy – Attracting early careers to lead New Zealand’s renewable energy future
24 Jul 2026A revamped early-career recruitment and development strategy is helping Contact Energy avoid what it says was a material workforce risk. In 2023, key areas like generation and trading had ageing staff, were highly dominated by men and lacked Māori and Pasifika representation. More than a fifth of the people working in these areas were over the age of 60, 80 per cent were men, and fewer than 6 per cent were Māori or Pasifika.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Eastland Generation – Showcase for shared success: TOPP2 geothermal power plant project
23 Jul 2026Iwi-developer partnerships that share risks and returns provide real opportunities for expanding New Zealand's renewable energy resources, says Eastland Generation. It's an approach the firm is using in its newest geothermal power plant, the 49MW TOPP2. Located on the Kawerau reservoir, TOPP2 is owned and operated by Eastland Generation on land leased from Ngāti Tūwharetoa Holdings.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Reefton Powerhouse Charitable Trust Inc. – Reefton Powerhouse Project
22 Jul 2026A project born over "a beer too many" in 2002 has led to the restoration and recommissioning of one of the most significant sites in the country's energy history. The Reefton hydroelectric power station, commissioned in 1888, provided the first public power supply in the Southern Hemisphere, earning the town the "Town of Light" nickname. Only the foundations remain of the original powerhouse, and along with the remnants of a 1908 replacement, the 1908 and 1935 turbine bits and the 1908 penstock and water control gates, are a Heritage New Zealand listed site.
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AWARDS FINALIST: The Lines Company – small distributor, big community impact
20 Jul 2026The Lines Company says it is seeking out new partnerships and technologies that can deliver material long-term benefits for its community. It wants to be sure every dollar it spends delivers lasting value and that means controlling costs and focusing on long-term resilience over short-term gains and technical novelties. The community-owned distributor cited as an example its use of technology to manage electric vehicle charging demand in Tūrangi, where there is limited spare line capacity.
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AWARDS FINALIST: KiwiRail – Decarbonising KiwiRail’s shunt fleet for a sustainable future
17 Jul 2026KiwiRail has procured 51 electric and hybrid shunting assets during the past eight years as part of a fleet modernisation programme that will reduce operating costs and emissions. By the time the programme is completed in 2029, almost two-thirds of the shunting fleet will be fully electric or hybrid. That is expected to avoid about 776 tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions annually and will reduce operating costs by more than 40 per cent over the assets' 25-to-35-year operating lives.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Māpuna - Contact's innovative geothermal well management solution – Contact Energy
16 Jul 2026Contact Energy has replaced a patchwork of legacy software and spreadsheets with a new geothermal reservoir management platform that has improved well monitoring and slashed the time needed for some engineering tasks. The system, known as Māpuna, was developed internally by Contact's geothermal specialists and technology team, and launched in June 2024. It consolidates data from more than 70 years of geothermal operations into a single system used for well and reservoir management.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Genesis Energy – Women in wholesale
15 Jul 2026A focus on well-being, belonging, and connection for women is paying off for Genesis Energy, with women advancing at an unprecedented rate through its wholesale division. In the past two years, 38 per cent of the people hired for the firm's wholesale operations were women, and the number of women working in wholesale has increased from 15 per cent of the workforce to 21 per cent.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Counties Energy – Reimagining energy to power thriving communities
14 Jul 2026Counties Energy is powering one of New Zealand's fastest-growing regions, surpassing 50,000 connections while transforming from a traditional lines company into a customer-focused energy and technology business that is helping shape the future energy system. As a 100 per cent consumer-owned electricity distributor, the company has balanced rapid growth with strong network performance, reducing average outage duration from 157.07 minutes in FY22 to 79.2 minutes in FY25 and improving outage frequency from 2.828 to 1.315 over the same period.
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AWARDS FINALIST: SUPA Energy – SUPA: Distributed power, private capital, community wins
13 Jul 2026SUPA Energy's "multi-objective dispatch" strategy across its growing network of solar and battery community generation hubs is earning cash returns for the schools, clubs, farms, marae, and businesses that host them.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Octopus Energy NZ – Empowering futures through squiggly career paths
9 Jul 2026Octopus Energy's "squiggly" drive to get more people into the energy business is proving so successful that 35 of the 37 people hired in its New Zealand operation in the past year were new to the sector. The programme was developed in response to what the electricity retailer describes as two long-term challenges facing the sector - an ageing workforce and a need to attract people from a wider range of backgrounds as electricity systems become more complex.
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