EMA Northern is holding a press conference today in Wellington, hosting mayors and power company chief executives to explain why they want proposed electricity pricing regime changes paused.
The Electricity Authority's proposals are wide-ranging but will mean lower power bills for businesses in the South and higher charges for the top of the North Island.
Otago-Southland Employers Association chief executive Virginia Nicholls told the Otago Daily Times the region could not afford to keep paying for infrastructure it did not use.
''More than $1.3billion of transmission investment has been commissioned in the upper North Island since 2004. But only 39% of that upgrade is being paid for by the upper North Island.''
Transmission costs in the lower North Island and South Island had increased by 61% on average to pay for the upgrades, she said.
The Otago-Southland association supported the authority's reform of transmission pricing because people in the South Island and lower North Island could not afford to keep paying for electricity grid infrastructure from which they received no benefit.
The current system was not fair and was unsustainable, Mrs Nicholls said.
Businesses should be making efficient future decisions, based on full costs including labour, fuel and energy costs.
''These location decisions will mean more efficient business decisions and better and more efficient use of the electricity grid.''
The Otago-Southland region was an ''ideal place'' to locate energy intensive industry, she said.
The region needed more people and already had good infrastructure, including significant ports for export.
However, the current transmission cost system made setting up new industry in the South challenging.
The South had a regional advantage of major hydro generation but the advantage was eroded by spreading transmission costs across the entire country.
''In the South, we pay the same rate for transmitting that electricity as people over 1000km away from it do.''
Reform was well overdue, Mrs Nicholls said. The authority had been working on the problem for more than seven years and every year reform was delayed, major industrial users and consumers in the region not needing major grid investment were paying tens of millions of dollars towards infrastructure they did not use.
Mrs Nicholls said there was some irony in the EMA holding its press conference today in Wellington to rail against the proposed transmission pricing charges.
Under the authority's current proposal, Wellington electricity customers would be $35 a year better off per household.
