The number of energy users that purchase New Zealand Energy Certificates (NZ-ECs) continues to grow strongly. There are changing trends in energy user requirements including an increased focus on purchasing NZ-ECs from devices that meet RE100 requirements.
With the increased demand for NZ-ECs the Residual Supply Mix (RSM) is now 5.47% more carbon-intensive than the National Supply Mix (NSM), marking an increase from the previous year’s 4.46% difference.
Read the full Annual RSM Publication for 2024/2025 here.
The last 12 months have been challenging for the electricity sector in New Zealand. Ongoing issues with gas production combined with significant periods of drought pushed up wholesale electricity prices to record levels last winter. The reduced hydro output meant a significant increase in coal and diesel generation to keep the lights on in New Zealand. As a result of the increased thermal generation, emissions from electricity generation in PY25 rose by a whopping 40% compared to the previous year.
For BraveTrace, it was another year of growth in energy users wanting to certify their electricity purchases as renewable and reduce their reportable Scope 2 electricity emissions. In PY25 we redeemed 2.16m NZ-ECs (New Zealand Energy Certificates), representing 5.2% of the total electricity generation in New Zealand, up from 1.79m (4.2%) in PY24. The total number of energy users also jumped from 307 in PY24 up to 375 in PY25, and as of today we have over 400 active energy users registered with BraveTrace. With ongoing strong growth in demand for NZ-ECs, we expect to be certifying over 10% of New Zealand’s generation in three years time.
A noticeable trend in PY25 was a clear move towards newer generation, less than 15 years old, that is compliant with the RE100 technical criteria. In PY23, just two years ago, 99.4% of NZ-ECs were issued from hydro production. Compare that with PY25 in which wind (46%) and solar (4%) accounted for half of our total certification and we can clearly see how the preferences of our energy users are evolving.
NZ-EC prices are confidential between the buyers and sellers, but we have regularly heard there is now a clear price separation between NZ-ECs for new generation that are RE100 compliant (mainly wind and solar) compared to NZ-ECs for older generation that are not RE100 compliant (mainly hydro). As highlighted in the Certification Trends section of this report, there is a tightening of the supply and demand balance in RE100 compliant NZ-ECs, which seems to be driving the lift in prices.