In Europe and America, electricity retailers let their customers know whether their electricity is coming from renewable energy or fossil fuels. In Australia, your retailer has no such obligation. The…
Campaigns to switch off won’t work until they fit in with the ways we already behave.
Andrew Huff
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions requires behavioural change. But how do we get individuals into this habit or, for that matter, any habit that reduces energy consumption? Two academic disciplines concern…
New technology - among other things - means our estimates of electricity consumption are based on old ideas.
Meg Lessard
In 2012, National Electricity Market electricity consumption continued its four-year decline. Everyone seems surprised that electricity demand continues to decline despite population and the economy growing…
Electricity prices have been rising rapidly during the past decade.
Sir Bennikins/Flickr
A few days ago, the Prime Minister Julia Gillard foreshadowed a “plan to make sure that families pay $250 less per year for electricity” to be discussed at this Friday’s meeting of the Council of Australian…
History suggests privatisation of the electricity industry is not such a bright idea.
Image from www.shutterstock.com
Surging power prices are having savage consequences for household discretionary incomes. Some would blame the government’s carbon tax, but the real culprit is price gouging. Judging from the pronouncements…
Yes, Australia gets hot. But let’s investigate some other ways to cool it down.
John Harvey
As the recent Energy White Paper and Senate Committee report confirm, Australia’s electricity prices are going up. The Productivity Commission states that they have risen by 50% in real terms over the…
Australia could soon have millions of small electricity generators.
absentmindedprof/Flickr
The 2012 Energy White Paper has much to commend it. In particular, the far greater acknowledgement of the need to shift to clean energy sources is a fundamental shift from previous White Papers. The emphasis…
Deregulation of the energy retail market will address the current politicisation of energy prices.
Bes Z/Flickr
The issue of deregulation of the energy retail market is an important one and I think the much-anticipated Energy White Paper, released by Energy Minister Martin Ferguson yesterday, does well to emphasise…
The power we need twice a year is making us pay year-round.
Andrew J Cosgriff
This is the year of electricity prices. Everyone, from the Prime Minister to your favourite barista, is talking about the recent rapid escalation in electricity prices. These increases are a complex story…
The National Electricity Market is in chronic failure mode.
Sveter Sveter
The Senate Select Committee on Electricity Pricing tabled its report in Parliament on November 1. The inquiry found substantial evidence of failures in the rules and operation of the electricity market…
AEMO is modelling the path to 100% renewables.
Stefan Gara
The Federal Government (presumably under pressure from the Greens) has given the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) the job of coming up with a 100% renewable energy scenario for 2030 and 2050. The…
The role of powerlines in bushfires is raising some pressing issues of climate change adaptation.
Paul Hocksenar
We have unwittingly hardwired a bushfire ignition source throughout our flammable landscapes – powerlines. Powerlines can fail under any conditions but the risk increases on days of high bushfire risk…
Australian household energy use increased by more than 30% in the past two decades.
ctandjung/Flickr
Electricity prices are a hot topic. Prices have skyrocketed in recent years and politicians have finally realised that people are struggling to pay energy bills. Power of Choice, an Australian Energy Market…
If closing brown coal power plants is part of the lowest cost mix of emissions reduction opportunities, then they will close without additional payment from the government.
ccdoh1/Flickr
This week the Australian Government announced that the “payment for closure” element of the Clean Energy Future package would not proceed. The decision has saved taxpayers a multi-billion dollar outlay…
Electricity price rises can be traced to a number of factors.
AAP Image
As the political debate around rising power prices and the carbon tax heats up, there is a renewed debate around the privatisation of electricity distribution in New South Wales. With power prices sure…
The Origin Smart portal provides customers with an estimate of future electricity bills.
fudj
Early last week, Origin Energy, Australia’s pre-eminent energy retailer, launched an online energy-use monitoring portal Origin Smart to much fanfare. All good – but what about the the privacy and security…
Pretty much everyone agrees with Julia Gillard’s assessment of why power prices are up. But there are many views on how to bring them down.
Tom Taker
Mr Abbott has learnt the hard way that the electricity industry is complex and that there is more to rising electricity bills than carbon pricing. Ms Gillard correctly identified rising costs of “poles…
The government should have been addressing electricity arrangements for the last four years.
Laurent LaSalle
The Prime Minister gave a speech on August 7 entitled Electricity prices: the facts. She explained, correctly, that the costs of transmission and distribution (network costs, otherwise referred to as “poles…
Not winning them over… some plain speaking might have helped the Gillard government explain just how the carbon tax will impact on electricity prices.
AAP
Confusion continues on how the carbon tax will hit the electricity bills of Australian households. While messages from electricity retailers may be on their way, Gujji Muthuswamy from Monash University’s…
Ross Garnaut: “One can’t avoid the reality that some political leaders have said that they would like to remove carbon pricing.”
AAP/Alan Porritt
Tomorrow Australia will place a price on carbon. The former climate change adviser to the Federal Government, Ross Garnaut, a Professorial Fellow in Economics at the University of Melbourne, led the push…