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Date: March 2024 | Client: NZCC | Sector: Energy | Energy infrastructure | Energy markets | Expertise: Regulation & competition

Study about the productivity of electricity distribution businesses in New Zealand

In CEPA’s recently published report we produced estimates of changes in New Zealand electricity distribution businesses’ (EDBs) productivity indices. The report examined EDB performance between 2008 and 2023 using two methods and provided separate estimates for total factor productivity and operating expenditure partial productivity.

We found that our productivity estimates have declined over the period. Although EDBs have expanded their outputs expenditure has increased at a faster rate.

Our report also highlights possible reasons for why this apparent decline in productivity could be attributed to other causes including a failure to correctly account for all outputs of an EDB, the difficulty in measuring the use of capital inputs and other factors such as increased weather related outage events.

The Commerce Commission published our draft report on 27 March. We look forward to hearing from interested stakeholders.

To find out more, please contact our experts listed below.

Benjamin Osenius-Eite
Managing Consultant Australia