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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
If Treasury modelling is right, about half of household carbon cost will be included in energy bills, which are now about 3% of household expenditure. That means the carbon cost on energy adds about 0.3…
The Australian aluminium industry is in the doldrums. A high dollar, low prices and Asian competition are threatening the industry, with older plants in New South Wales and Victoria under threat of closure…
Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions increased by 0.6% year-on-year in the December quarter, despite a drop in electricity consumption - the largest source of emissions in the national inventory, figures…
Tens of thousands of Australians live and work close to coal-fired power plants. The cocktail of gaseous and particulate pollutants arising from coal power generation is injurious to human health. All…