AWARDS FINALIST: Meridian's community decarbonisation fund
15 Jul 2025Community groups looking to decarbonise often face the steepest hurdles - including tight budgets, limited resources and competing priorities. Recognising this, Meridian Energy launched the Community Decarbonisation Fund in 2022 - funded entirely from the net proceeds of Meridian's Certified Renewable Energy product.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Todd Energy and Otaraua Hapū – Building a future together
14 Jul 2025A long-standing partnership between Todd Energy and Otaraua Hapū is demonstrating how business and iwi can work together to create enduring social, cultural and economic value. What began in 2014 as a commitment to better engagement has evolved into a decade-long collaboration that is reshaping opportunities for whānau and setting a new benchmark for corporate-community relationships. At the heart of the initiative is Nga Ringawera Otaraua, a hapū-owned enterprise and Todd Energy partner.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Octopus Energy – A smarter energy future
11 Jul 2025Octopus Energy says its focus on smart technology and time-of-use pricing is reducing costs for its customers and letting them benefit from the growing market for demand-response. The company says its products prove the effectiveness of price signals in driving behaviour change; its customers typically use 9 per cent less electricity during peak periods and 40 per cent more at night - shaving more than $100 a year from an average household bill.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Lightyears Solar – Powering communities
10 Jul 2025Lightyears Solar says its focus on local partnerships is supporting rural economies, preserving farmland and delivering clean energy where it's needed most. Each project typically employs 10 to 12 local contractors, keeping investment local and adding depth to local capability. The smaller scale of its projects, coupled with the company's land-leasing policy and its Agri-PV approach, is helping keep rural land productive while also providing a new revenue stream for landowners.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Beach Energy – Tackling homelessness
9 Jul 2025A transformative partnership between Beach Energy and the Roderique Hope Trust is reshaping the way the Taranaki community responds to homelessness. What began as a sponsorship has evolved into a deeper collaboration that's delivering lasting change for whānau facing housing insecurity. The latest initiative in the six-year partnership is the creation of a Housing Community Connector role, fully funded by Beach.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Transpower – HVDC Pole 2 life-extension programme
8 Jul 2025In an impressive engineering achievement, Transpower has successfully completed a five-year, $63 million programme to extend the life of Pole - one of the two converter poles in the high-voltage direct current link - by 20 years. This has not only secured the reliability of critical national infrastructure, but has also delivered a significant saving for consumers by deferring almost $1 billion in replacement costs.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Powerco – Leading with culture, connection and well-being
7 Jul 2025Powerco says its in-house leadership development programme has helped reverse record-low staff engagement, slashed requests for counselling and seen the firm meet its Māori participation target a year early. The programme, grounded in Te Whare Tapa Whā - the holistic Māori model of well-being - was developed by Kacey Graham, a former Gas Hub customer manager. She transitioned into the people and culture team with a clear mission - to build empathetic, inclusive leaders who support the well-being of all employees - especially Māori, Pasifika and women.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Trust Tairāwhiti & Seven Rivers – Empowering schools with energy resilience
4 Jul 2025In the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle, energy resilience became more than a goal - it became a necessity for remote schools across Tairāwhiti. Through engagement with schools, one principal suggested that the project could also enable electricity resilience through off-grid battery storage. Trust Tairāwhiti responded with a transformative initiative that combined solar power, battery storage and social procurement to deliver long-term benefits to four kura on the East Coast.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Ecotricity, Endless Energy, and Tātaki Auckland Unlimited – Stadium leads low-carbon sport charge
3 Jul 2025In a move to decarbonise public venues and inspire climate action through sport, Go Media Stadium - home to the One NZ Warriors and Auckland FC - has become the first stadium in New Zealand to install a large-scale solar energy system. The initiative, delivered through a partnership between Ecotricity, Endless Energy, and Tātaki Auckland Unlimited, saw more than 1700 solar panels installed across the stadium's east and west stands.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Westpower/ElectroNet – Where well-being thrives
2 Jul 2025In a sector where talent retention and engagement are critical, Westpower and the ElectroNet Group have taken a bold approach to workplace well-being. They have developed a suite of initiatives employees can draw on to best meet their well-being and career interests as they see them, and to fit their work and life priorities as they evolve over time.
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