I do love Facts
From Your ABC
Posted Thu 7 Dec 2023According to the competition watchdog, which analysed retail market offers, the median annual household bill is now sitting around $1,926 across the National Energy Market — a 45 per cent increase in two years.
Politically this figure is problematic for a federal government that was elected on a promise to cut household power bills by an average of $275 a year by 2025.
Instead, prices have gone in the opposite direction, rising by about $600 since that pledge was made.
"Energy Consumers Australia has done research which suggests 56 per cent of customers are currently concerned that energy will be unaffordable for them within the next three years," she said.
"That's a significant statistic."
By 2030 the government wants 82 per cent of Australia's electricity to come from wind, solar and hydro, up from about 32 per cent now, backed by a vast new network of high-voltage transmission lines to connect these far-flung renewables to consumers.
Shifting from fossil fuels to renewables in just seven years is an "economic transformation on the scale of the industrial revolution", according to Ms McNamara, who warns "it's not costless".
A price tag can be found in the Australian Energy Market Operator's own figures, buried deep in its Integrated System Plan, mapping the decades-long clean energy transition.
The total of all costs of phasing out coal and gas-fired power stations and replacing them with wind, solar, hydro and batteries on an industrial scale between now and 2050 is estimated to be about $383 billion.
Including the new transmission network required to support these projects, the price tag of the clean energy transition increases to a little over $400 billion – a cost that'll be spread out over several decades.
These are likely to be conservative estimates, though, given several mega-projects are already over budget, including Snowy Hydro 2.0, which was estimated to cost $2 billion and is now on track to surpass $12 billion, and the accompanying HumeLink transmission line which has blown out from an estimated $1 billion to over $5 billion.
Energy law expert Chris Flynn, who's advised governments on multi-billion-dollar projects including Sun Cable and Marinus Link, said the transition "was nothing less than the biggest peacetime challenge Australia's faced… in terms of infrastructure".
"We are looking to replace in 20–30 years an energy system that's taken us 160 years to build," he said.
Consumers, he predicted, would pay "through taxes or higher power prices".
"We're going to end up with higher power prices for a long time to come," Mr Flynn said.
Until the promise of cleaner and cheaper power is delivered, consumers are being urged to shop around, talk to their retailer if they're struggling to pay their bill, and take advantage of the government rebates and subsidies on offer.
*** Bloomberg NEF's put an even bigger price tag on the transition, estimating spending on new electricity generation, storage, transmission, and supply by 2050 would be closer to $1.4 trillion ......
