A fourth-annual energy-hardship conference was scheduled for 2-3 September 2026 at Pipitea Marae, Wellington, hosted by Ara Ake with Community Energy Network and WISE, but has been cancelled after Budget 2026 ended Crown funding for Ara Ake.
The Energy Resilience and Affordability Conference was scheduled for 2-3 September 2026 at Pipitea Marae in Wellington, but has been cancelled after the Government ended Crown funding for its organiser, Ara Ake, in Budget 2026. National outlets including Carbon News reported that the funding cut takes effect from 1 July 2026, with Ara Ake's functions to be folded into the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA). Ticket sales on the event's Humanitix listing now show as stopped.
The conference was hosted by Ara Ake, the New Plymouth-based energy innovation centre, in partnership with the Community Energy Network and the WISE Charitable Trust, according to the event's Humanitix listing and Ara Ake's own website. It had been positioned as the fourth annual edition of a series that began as the Reducing Energy Hardship Conference.
The two-day event was aimed at thought leaders, practitioners, policy makers and community innovators working on energy hardship in Aotearoa. The 2026 theme was 'From energy consumers to energy communities', framed around local, participatory approaches to energy resilience and affordability. Workshops on the Community Energy Activator programme and the Home Performance Advisor programme were planned for Friday 4 September. By way of scale, Ara Ake reported the 2025 edition (8-9 October 2025 at Harbourside Venue Centre) brought together around 200 attendees from iwi, communities, government and industry.
The listed venue, Pipitea Marae at 55-59 Thorndon Quay, sits in central Wellington close to Wellington Railway Station and the Thorndon precinct, roughly 8km from Wellington Airport (WLG). Delegate-movement and accommodation planning are now moot given the cancellation, but the Thorndon location would have placed delegates within walking distance of rail and central-city hotels.
The cancellation is a notable data point for the New Zealand business-events calendar: an established, government-linked policy conference has been pulled mid-cycle as a direct consequence of a Crown funding decision, removing a recurring Wellington fixture in the energy and social-policy space and illustrating how public-sector budget changes can ripple directly into the MICE pipeline.
Cited links supporting this report.
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