Electricity Demand and Generation Scenarios (EDGS)

EDGS explores potential future electricity demand, and the generation capacity needed to meet that demand, out to 2050.

Purpose

MBIE prepares an independent set of scenarios called the Electricity Demand and Generation Scenarios (EDGS) that explore potential future electricity demand and required generation capacity. These are used by the Commerce Commission to assess Transpower’s planning proposals for future capital investment in the electricity transmission grid. The Commerce Commission is responsible for approving any major investments in transmission assets by Transpower.

EDGS has an explicit role in the investment test for approving Transpower’s proposals under the Transpower Capital Expenditure Input Methodology (Capex IM). The Capex IM is part of the Commerce Commission's individual price-quality path regulation of Transpower's electricity transmission services, under Subpart 7 of Part 4 of the Commerce Act 1986. For more information about the Capex IM, see the Commerce Commission website.

Transpower input methodologies(external link) — Commerce Commission

2023 update

MBIE is currently preparing a 2023 update of EDGS. To keep up to date with this work, please subscribe to receive alerts on MBIE’s energy modelling work.

Subscribe to updates(external link)

We undertook a consultation over May and June 2023 on a set of draft assumptions about the future state of the electricity system. We wanted to ensure that the potential scenarios presented and resulting modelling accurately reflect the potential pathways for the electricity sector.

You can find out more and read the submissions on the consultation page.

Have your say: Electricity Demand and Generation Scenarios (EDGS) 2023 consultation

2019 update

The last update to the Electricity Demand and Generation Scenarios was published in July 2019. EDGS 2019 explores future levels of electricity demand and how it could be met out to 2050 under 5 scenarios.

The 2019 EDGS report describes the assumptions and key results for each of the modelled scenarios in the 2019 EDGS. Historic data, assumptions, and results for each modelled scenario are provided in the Data Summary file.

Electricity demand and generation scenarios 2019 [PDF 1.8MB](external link)

EDGS 2019 — Data summary [XLSX, 224KB](external link)

Feedback

We welcome feedback on the Electricity Demand and Generation Scenarios.

You can contact us at:

energyinfo@mbie.govt.nz

Last updated: 16 August 2023