Frontier Economics' Stephen Gray was commissioned by Vector to assess whether the draft Input Methodology decision by the New Zealand Commerce Commission will help or hinder the investment that’s needed to decarbonise the economy. The New Zealand Commerce Commission is currently developing a final decision over the key regulatory principles that bind the way electricity networks in Aotearoa New Zealand can operate and invest for the next seven years, and possibly longer (the Input Methodologies, or IMs).
In this video below, Stephen shares his view on how the IMs could support the network investments needed to deliver New Zealand’s energy transition to net zero by 2050.
Electrification is at the core of New Zealand’s decarbonisation strategy, and this will require extensive investment in transmission and distribution networks over a short period of time. Indeed, it will be impossible for New Zealand to meet its decarbonisation commitments without this extensive network investment.
Moreover, there is widespread agreement that investment in electricity networks today will secure long-term benefits for consumers. So it is important that New Zealand’s regulatory framework helps to facilitate the network investment that is required. However, there is a real risk that the current regulatory framework will, in fact, hinder major network investment projects.
The key problem is that the regulatory cash flows tend to be back-ended, creating a risk that the cash flows in the early years of a project’s life are not sufficient to support the credit rating and gearing that the regulator has assumed. Where this happens, a project is not commercially viable and does not proceed. And, of course, no consumers receive any benefit from a project that does not proceed.
Our analysis found the draft Input Methodologies do not contain the sort of ‘financeability’ test that regulators in other markets employ. Nor do they provide potential investors with certainty about how a financeability issue would be addressed if it was identified.
A process to ensure that the regulatory cash flows are sufficient to support the credit rating and gearing that the regulator has assumed would remove a regulatory roadblock to the efficient investment that’s needed to meet the task of decarbonisation.
Extra for experts – a solution
A workable solution could be for the Input Methodologies to accelerate the allowed cash flows in a Net Present Value-neutral manner, as Stephen explains in this short video. The draft Input Methodologies decision canvassed several options to make this happen, of which the most promising was removing indexation of the Regulated Asset Base.
This excerpt was originally published in Vector's stakeholder newsletter.
