The Federal Government is moving to stop energy retailers passing on their advertising costs to consumers. Photo: MarkPiovesan.
Lower electricity prices could be on their way, with the Federal Government determined to rein in energy retailers passing on too many costs to consumers.
Retailers have been hitting their customers for things such as advertising costs and Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen says enough is enough.
Using his opening speech to the Energy Week conference in Melbourne on Wednesday (18 June), Mr Bowen announced changes are in train to restrain retailers from price gouging practices.
The minister said the electricity price cap for most of the country, known as the Default Market Offer, was not working to protect consumers.
“The DMO was intended to act as a benchmark price to stop the worst forms of price gouging, while leaving the job of putting downward pressure on prices to competition,” he said.
“However, I’ll be frank – I don’t think it’s working that way and reform is needed.
“The vast majority of bill payers, some 80 per cent, could be getting a better deal.
“It’s difficult to defend the DMO when the customer is required to do the deal hunting.
“We know it could be so much simpler.
“That’s why we have work underway to deliver a better regulated pricing mechanism which will put downward pressure on electricity bills and also ensure the energy market better utilises the huge uptake of rooftop solar and increasingly batteries.”
Declaring that “Australians aren’t going to continue to support our energy transformation if they don’t think our energy system is fair for them”, the minister said the government would deliver a reformed pricing mechanism next year.
“This will be designed to get the best deal for consumers and act as the maximum price retailers can charge for standing offers in DMO regions,” he said.
“The reformed pricing mechanism will bring DMO states closer in line with other jurisdictions.”
The government will consult on the design, but changes could include stripping out the DMO’s competition allowance and putting further restraints on what retailers can claim back from customers in their bills.
“These reforms will also set the energy market up to better reflect our changing energy grid,” Mr Bowen said.
“With the rise of rooftop solar and home batteries, this is an opportunity to not only encourage greater uptake of consumer energy resources but ensure they’re better utilised across the grid.
“The promise of renewables is affordable energy – and we need to get more renewables into the system to push wholesale prices down.
“The longer expensive coal and gas keep setting the price, the longer bills will be higher than they should be.”
The DMO is meant to set a price cap that encourages competition and market offers below those set prices.
But energy retailers across the country have been setting large tariff increases, with some admitting they are trying to close the gap between the safety net price and their offers.
Mr Bowen said the challenge for him and the Federal Government was to deliver a modern and fairer energy system, and one that capitalised on Australia’s natural abundance, while delivering lower bills and emissions.
Getting it right, he said, was the key to the nation’s economic prosperity.
“The challenges before Australia are serious,” the minister said.
“Our climate is changing; across our nation we see droughts in one state and floods in another.
“It’s no longer acceptable to deny this reality. Nor should we accept those who deny the global effort to limit the worst of it.
“We asked Australians to let us keep going – keep fixing the energy grid, making the energy system fairer and seizing the net zero opportunities before us.
“That’s what I plan on doing.”
Original Article published by Chris Johnson on Region Canberra.
