General news

Join us for Q&A on the Energy Competition Task Force preferred level playing field measures

  • Generation

Do you have questions about our proposal to introduce mandatory non-discrimination obligations that the gentailers would have to follow? We’re hosting a webinar so you can ask us your questions directly.

To open, we will provide a brief overview of the proposed mandatory non-discrimination obligations and the related progressive approach for levelling the playing field if required.

We will then open the floor for questions – we will focus most of the time on this and will do our best to answer all questions in the session. We will respond to any remaining questions after the event and upload all Q&A to the Level playing field measures consultation.

Register for the Q&A forum: 13 March, 2:30-3:30pm.

The Energy Competition Task Force’s proposal is for non-discrimination obligations to be introduced to level the playing field between the four large gentailers – Genesis, Contact, Meridian and Mercury – and independent participants in the electricity market.

The proposed non-discrimination obligations would prevent the generator-retailers (gentailers) from giving preferential treatment to their retail arms in relation to hedge contracts.

Instead, gentailers would have to make these products available to all industry participants on effectively the same terms as they use when trading internally, and provide greater transparency about the prices and volumes provided to the retail sides of their businesses.

This would give the Electricity Authority the ability to take action if monitoring shows evidence of unfair treatment.

The Electricity Authority is now seeking feedback on an options paper that sets out the proposal for introducing these new obligations by Wednesday 23 April 2025.

If you have any questions you would like answered at the session, please send your questions to taskforce@ea.govt.nz with 'Task Force Q&A- level playing field measures ' in the email subject line.

We look forward to you joining us!

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