Featured work

We’re constantly advocating for changes to tree regulations. In 2023, lines companies spent over $58 million on vegetation management including pruning and felling trees that obstructed lines and infrastructure. This cost is making electricity more expensive for consumers. 

MBIE conducted a public review of these regulations in 2023. The Minister then announced changes in May 2024. However, these small changes will not help us to have more resilient electricity infrastructure when we face with our next wild-weather event.  

In August, MBIE ran a targeted consultation to ENA (and through ENA our members). It was on the introduction of a risk-based process where lines companies can require that ‘out of zone’ trees (that pose a fall-risk to the electricity network) be removed. While these are the sorts of powers the sector has been asking for, there are some challenges for the lines companies in the proposal. See our submission here.

The Minister has signalled that further proposals on changes to the tree regs are yet to come. He specifically mentions restrictions on forestry planting near lines and differentiating between residential trees and commercial forestry. These are both areas where we proposed changes in our  2023 submission. 

While it’s very encouraging to see these are still on MBIE’s radar, the drip-feed of incremental changes is challenging to respond to. Nevertheless, we support these areas for further changes and are eager to assist MBIE with their policy development on these topics. 

Engagement is ongoing and we’ll keep you posted. 

We have engaged engineering consultancy Beca to assess the costs of carrying out works in the road corridor for lines companies. This involves the cost of consenting and temporary traffic management and tracking these costs from 2019 to now.  

Beca has crunched the numbers from lines companies to show how much they are spending on traffic management, and how much that is increasing each year.

The report will be uploaded here early in the new year. 

The Network Transformation Roadmap (NTR) was created in anticipation of the role that lines companies would play to enable the transition to a low carbon future.  

The NTR includes 19 actions. These are designed to assist lines companies to build for the new energy future. These actions are to be implemented over a ten-year period to 2030. 

With the rapidly changing electricity landscape here in Aotearoa, the roadmap needs to be kept up to date for it to be useful. It was originally published in 2019 and reviewed and updated again in 2022. We commit to reviewing the roadmap again and aim to complete this in the 2024/25 financial year. 

The relevant reports can be found below.