Parties race to pledge lower power bills as energy contest heats up

Households will be promised a $165 cut to their electricity bills in a new political contest on energy, as Labor and the Coalition race to announce tough new measures on big retailers, including penalties for price gouging.

Both major party's are promising lower power prices.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten will reveal plans for simpler bills with “capped” prices under a Labor government, assuring voters he will force the big electricity companies to scrap “standing offers” that push up costs.

The move comes as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also prepares a power price crackdown that will set a price range for default electricity packages and fine the big retailers if they exceed the cap.

Read the story by David Crowe from The Age - “Parties race to pledge lower power bills as energy contest heats up.”

(The conversation about carbon emissions has been hijacked - all Australians, from our politician down, should have one prime concern and that is about how we go about reducing the country’s carbon dioxide emissions, that matter of costs should be secondary consideration, for if we don’t pay now we most certainly will later. Determined to preserve his job, Malcolm Turnbull, along with his coalition cohort, have changed the conversation from one which should have clearly, and responsibly, been about reducing Australia’s carbon emissions, to one that is purely about price.

The Australian electorate is price-sensitive and so the Labor Party and most other politicians, not The Greens, have jumped on board the price band-wagon and are riding it to the abyss - Robert McLean)

Feel the power: Malcolm Turnbull summons electricity retailers to Canberra for summit

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has thrown the switch to brow-beating, calling in the nation's biggest electricity retailers for face-to-face talks next Wednesday in a bid to curb galloping household and business electricity bills, and improve their market sensitivity.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull puts in ear
plugs during a visit to the Snowy Hydro plant. 

In comments that go some way to vindicating claims from one of his backbenchers that people would die this winter from not being able to afford heating, Mr Turnbull says the cost pressures from sky-rocketing energy prices are leading families to avoid turning on heating and lights, and that businesses are doing the same with plants.

Read  Mark Kenny’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Feel the power: Malcolm Turnbull summons electricity retailers to Canberra for summit.”

Arguments against renewable energy are rubbish

I've lived without electricity bills twice. The first time was in the 1940s in a sawmilling hamlet in the Victorian Alps.

Our backbench is 45,000 head of cattle, which
 are happy with the current arrangements. 

As little kids, we had no fridge to raid. If we wanted a cool drink of home-made ginger beer we had to get up on a chair and open the Coolgardie Safe, which was a tin box with holes in it that hung in the breeze under the back veranda. On really hot days Dad would sling a wet hessian bag over it.

In winter we were kept warm by the open fire and food was cooked on the wood stove, which also provided hot water to the kitchen through the pipes built into the "water jacket”.

When it came to bath time, Dad would fire up the chip heater with off-cuts from the mill. In those days, water was the great scarce resource so there would always be at least three to a bath.

Read Harold Mitchell’s story in the Brisbane Times - “Arguments against renewable energy are rubbish.”

Households to save under Clean Energy Target, but questions loom for Turnbull over Paris

Australian households could save about $90 a year, or up to $1000 on their electricity bills over a decade to 2030 under a Clean Energy Target proposed by the Finkel review of the electricity sector, compared to a business-as-usual scenario.

As the long-awaited review was released on Friday at a Council of Australian Governments meeting, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull promised a CET was "no barrier to building a coal-fired power station", in a carefully calibrated message to conservative MPs who have already expressed concern about the scheme.

"There is nothing in the Clean Energy Target that would prevent a new coal-fired power station being built. It would provide an incentive for lower emissions technologies, however," he said.

But Mr Turnbull and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg will likely face a barrage of questions from conservative MPs about the CET - and whether it would, for example, facilitate investment in new coal-fired power - as soon as Tuesday, when the Parliament returns and the party room meets.

Read the story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Households to save under Clean Energy Target, but questions loom for Turnbull over Paris.”

Tony Abbott slapped down as Malcolm Turnbull opts for 'minimalist' reshuffle

PM "slaps down" Tony Abbott (pictured) over calls
to ditch Australia's renewable energy target.

The Turnbull government has slapped down Tony Abbott's call for it to ditch its renewable energy target for 2020, declaring there are "no plans" to change the policy that was settled when Mr Abbott was prime minister.

Environment and Energy Minister, Josh Frydenberg, told Fairfax Media the government's intention was to stick with its policy and contrast it with Labor's commitment to a more ambitious target for 2030 that would be a "reckless hit on family and business electricity bills".

In a direct repudiation of Mr Abbott's assertion that the existing policy would increase prices, reduce reliability and threaten heavy industries, Mr Frydenberg said: "The government has no plans to change the 2020 RET which was settled just 18 months ago providing investor certainty."

Mr Abbott delivered a scathing critique of the government on Saturday, just as Mr Turnbull began discussions with senior colleagues on who would fill the key health portfolio after Sussan Ley's forced resignation over her travel claims.

Read Michael Gordon’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Tony Abbott slapped down as Malcolm Turnbull opts for 'minimalist' reshuffle.”

Government killed emissions scheme despite knowing it could shave $15 billion off electricity bills

The Turnbull government is sitting on advice that an emissions intensity scheme - the carbon policy it put on the table only to rule out just 36 hours later - would save households and businesses across the country up to $15 billion in electricity bills over a decade.

While Malcolm Turnbull has publicly rejected this sort of scheme by claiming it would push up prices, an analysis in a Australian Electricity Market Commission report handed to the government months ago finds it would actually cost consumers far less than other approaches, including doing nothing.

It finds that would still be the case even if the government boosted its climate target to a 50 per cent cut in emissions by 2030.

Assuming average electricity use, the analysis by scheme architect Danny Price, of Frontier Economics, found costs would be $11.2 billion lower over the decade to 2030 if the government introduced the scheme and met its existing climate target.

Read Adam Morton’s story in the Melbourne Age - “Government killed emissions scheme despite knowing it could shave $15 billion off electricity bills.”

Abbott Government decisions on solar power to impact on pensioners

O

n cold days Mal Owen is happy to run an electric heater in the bathroom, and doesn't worry about the cost.

Nicole Hasham - 
considers the impact
of solar cuts on
pensioners.

The pensioner draws on the sun's energy to run an electric clothes dryer during the day, and in a decade is expected to save more than $400 a year on his electricity bills.

"I've always wanted solar but I couldn't afford the outlay," said Mr Owen, 77, of Thornbury in Melbourne.

"The local council offered to cover the installation and let me pay it off through the rates over 10 years. So it worked out very nicely for me."

But a controversial Abbott government move means thousands of other low- and middle-income Australians may not see the same benefits.

Read Nicole Hasham’s story in the Sydney Morning Herald - “Solar subsidies: Pensioners could miss out on lower power bills after Abbott government solar cuts”