Greenpeace is labelling the big four power companies ‘vampires’, for an expected record payout of $1.4 billion to their shareholders. Mercury, Contact and Genesis have already announced an increase to their shareholder payouts in their annual results. The final gentailer, Meridian, is expected to confirm its increased shareholder payouts today and bring the total to $1.4 bn.
Stats NZ confirmed electricity prices jumped 4.9% in the June quarter, the steepest rise in over a decade, with prices increasing 10.4% in the year ended June. Consumer NZ found 20% of people have had difficulty paying their power bill in the past year – up from 18% last year.
“Families and businesses are being slammed by record high power bills, all so that the big four power companies can siphon off an expected $1.4 billion for their shareholders,” says Greenpeace Aotearoa campaigner Gen Toop
“This is corporate blood-sucking at its most brutal”.
“Instead of re-investing their revenue into building more clean, cheap renewables that would bring power bills down, these corporate vampires are bleeding households and the economy dry to fund their record shareholder payout. And the Government is just letting them do it.”
This year Contact Energy increased its total payout to $384 million, Mercury paid $202 million despite its profits collapsing to just $1m, and Genesis Energy handed out $157 million, even as it hiked household bills by 7.6% and corporate bills by 10.6%.
Meridian is expected to maintain record payouts after funnelling $462 million to shareholders last year. In 2024, the four firms paid out just over $1.3b in dividends to shareholders. They invested less than that, about $1b, in capital expenditure in new generation during that year.
“Power is an essential service and New Zealanders’ health and wellbeing depends on them being able to afford to warm and power their homes. Essential services, like affordable power, should always come before shareholder profits,” says Toop.
“These companies have been deliberately underinvesting in renewables so that they can keep dirty fossil fuels in the system because it pushes power prices up,” says Toop. “Households and the climate pay the price so that wealthy shareholders can laugh their way to the bank.”
Greenpeace is calling for urgent reform of the electricity sector. They say the Government should provide interest-free loans for household solar and consider intervening to cap the shareholder returns of the gentailers until they have sufficiently reinvested profit into new renewable generation.
