This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
AUSTRALIAN businesses and households are set to feel further pain next year as bosses of energy companies warn that electricity prices will keep rising at The Australian Financial Review’s Energy and Climate Summit.
Alinta Energy chief executive Jeff Dimery suggests that prices could soar by 35 percent at the least, in 2023.
“Next year, using the current market prices, tariffs are going up a minimum 35 per cent,” Dimery said.
This will only heighten the pressure that already sits on the shoulders of many home owners and renters who are already struggling with the cost of living.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Australia’s aversion to fossil fuels as we transition into renewable energy have led to this new uprise in energy costs.
The jump that’s estimated for power tariffs next year which has been based on increases in wholesale prices, adds to an increase of 18 percent as recent as July 1.
The Labor party made promises that power prices would drop by 2025 prior to this year’s election and despite the ominous signs that this won’t be the case, climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen stands by it.
“We remain of the view that renewables are the cheapest form of energy by a country mile as AEMO [Australian Energy Market Operator] says, and getting more renewables in the system will mean lower power prices,” Bowen said at the summit.
“I don’t think that should be such a controversial statement still in Australia in 2022.”
CEO of the Energy Users Association of Australia Andrew Richards says that it needs to be clear to everyone that making a transition one from one energy source to another is a huge challenge.
“It appears that some people think [the energy transition] will be easy and cheap, but I think most people in this room understand it’s hard and expensive and likely to drive energy bills [up] in the near term,” said Richards.
Meanwhile the Energy Efficiency Council said an urgent uptake of energy efficiency across the country is overdue, as both businesses and households unnecessarily battle the pressures of high energy bills.
EEC CEO Luke Menzel said energy efficiency is the superpower of emissions reduction, adding “it reduces bills and cuts emissions at one fell swoop,”.
Meanwhile the Property Council of Australia said Australia’s residential and commercial buildings account for a quarter of Australia’s emissions and around half of the nation’s electricity consumption.
Edwina MacDonald, acting CEO at the Australian Council of Social Service said the strategy should also help address poverty and inequality, as many of the country’s most vulnerable individuals and households are living in homes that are either dangerously hot or cold.
“Support cannot come soon enough for the millions of people on low-incomes who are living in dangerously hot or cold homes, already depriving themselves of energy and going without food or medicines to afford their energy bills.”
