Essay by Eric Worrall

As our new Prime Minister’s grand green energy transformation plan falls flat, ordinary Australians are feeling the pain of politically motivated lack of investment in dispatchable energy infrastructure.

Millions of Australians to be hit with energy bill price hikes

Major energy retailers are expected to increase prices as early as Friday. Find out if you’ll be affected here.

Millions of customers across large parts of Australia’s eastern states are about to be hit with huge hikes to power bills as price increases approved by the regulator kick in from Friday.

In May, the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) announced it would be raising the default market offer (DMO) – or the price providers are allowed to charge their customers – with the changes coming into effect from July 1.

The hikes mean Queenslanders could see an increase of up to 12.6 per cent, while those in NSW could see up to 18.3 per cent and 9.5 per cent in South Australia.

From August 1, one of the country’s biggest retailers, AGL, will slug NSW electricity customers close to 18 per cent, likely to lead to many households paying annual increase of hundreds of dollars.

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The prices of some smaller energy companies are also set to soar after July 1, with ReAmped and LPE increasing their prices by 100 per cent, while Discover Energy will increase by 285 per cent and GloBird by 147 per cent.

Taylor Blackburn from Finder told 7NEWS these smaller companies are hiking their prices in a bid to lose customers.

“We’ve seen a lot of smaller providers actually beg their customers to go somewhere else and to shop around,” he said.

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Read more: https://7news.com.au/business/energy/millions-of-australians-set-for-energy-bill-price-hikes-c-7351017

The price rises are only happening because in the current political environment, nobody is investing in new dispatchable energy capacity. Gas drilling has been all but banned in Eastern states, where the power shortages are occurring. For example in 2021 the Victorian Government added a permanent fracking ban to the State Constitution.

It could all have been so different.

If Australia had an energy friendly political environment which encouraged low cost coal and gas power, we would have had an abundance of capacity which could have helped keep down prices.

Or if we had a significant nuclear power fleet, they would have acted as a counterbalance to the price rises. Nuclear power plants only have to be refuelled every two years, and Australia has a world class abundance of Uranium and Thorium deposits.

Our new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s green energy plans will do nothing to alleviate these economically crippling energy price rises. If you have any doubts about this, I refer you to President Obama’s excellent explanation of why green energy is always more expensive.