Draft National Infrastructure Plan

7.1. Context: Infrastructure sectors face different challenges | Te Horopaki: He rerekē ngā wero kei mua i ngā rāngai tūāhanga

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Our system-level advice is intended to set up infrastructure providers, across all sectors, for success. However, individual infrastructure sectors face different challenges when it comes to planning, funding and delivering investment that meets current and future demands.

Infrastructure sectors face different current and future demands. All infrastructure sectors will need to continue maintaining and renewing existing assets as well as investing in new or improved assets. But, as outlined in Section 3, economic, demographic, technological and climate trends facing us will have varying impacts on different sectors. Some sectors will need to consolidate in the face of slowing demand growth, and others will need to continue growing their networks.

Infrastructure sectors have different operating environments. Section 4 outlines the main features of the operating environment. These include oversight and accountability arrangements, which differ between central government, local government, and commercial entities, and pricing and funding arrangements, which differ between networks and social infrastructure. Other features of the operating environment, like resource management legislation, affect all infrastructure sectors. This affects how those sectors can respond to shifting investment demands.

Infrastructure sectors are structured differently, which affects how decisions are made. This includes different arrangements for providing and regulating infrastructure. The number of entities involved in infrastructure provision, and how they coordinate with each other, varies between sectors.

This section of the Plan provides a sectoral view on the challenges and opportunities that are presented in previous sections of the Plan. It brings together important information at the sectoral level. This includes information on institutional structures, funding models, investment demand drivers, community perceptions and expectations, current network performance, future forecasts for investment demand, comparisons with current investment intentions, and the main issues and opportunities facing each sector.

Current intentions information draws from the most recent available information. The information presented draws from the National Infrastructure Pipeline at March 2025, Council Long Term Plans, investment intentions submitted to the Treasury in June 2024, and their Quarterly Investment Report (QIR) information from December 2024. Investment intentions for generation in the electricity sector are based on a 2023 survey of generators for the Electricity Authority which has been updated with information from public announcements. The Commission has applied assumptions and modelled spend from the project information available. The final Plan will include updated information from these sources. Care is needed, however, drawing conclusions from direct comparisons because the bars do not always reflect equivalent information but show an aggregate view from a project or investment planning perspective.

Current intentions are indicated in a chart for each sector using two bars for each of the next 10 years. The left bar shows aggregate investment across individual initiatives (bottom up) and the right bar shows investment intentions from longer term planning and medium risk projects and programmes in the QIR. Commitment is indicated from strong at the bottom (deeper colours) to weaker at the top (lighter colours) across each information source. These intentions are contrasted against our forward guidance on long-term infrastructure investment demand in each sector.

Sector summaries also draw upon our other work. This includes work on international comparisons, historical investment trends, and forward guidance on future investment demands that were summarised in Section 3, as well as our review of public opinion research about public perceptions of infrastructure needs.^[100] It also draws upon other information that we have published, such as sector state of play reports published before the Infrastructure Strategy, our recent report on asset management practices, and performance monitoring dashboards for the four network infrastructure sectors.^[101]

The sectoral view is a work in progress. We focus on seven relatively broad sectors, each of which includes multiple sub-sectors that have their own distinct dynamics (Figure 38). Our approach to defining these sectors is influenced by data availability, including how sectors were defined in the historical statistical data we draw upon.^[102] Where meaningful differences exist within sectors, we have noted them. Further work is needed to disaggregate some sectors, in particular separating the Justice and Defence Estate sectors that are currently grouped under the ‘Public Administration and Safety’ sector, and to add information on other sectors that are not yet captured here, such as the Ports and Airports sectors and other types of social infrastructure, such as parks and open spaces.

Infrastructure sectors included in our sector summaries