Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen will meet today with state and territory energy ministers, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and the Australian Energy Regulator (AER), where the energy crisis, the government’s policy response and next steps will be discussed.
A number of industry experts have weighed in on the unfolding energy crisis, with Greg Bourne, former President of BP Australasia and former advisor to Margaret Thatcher, saying, “We knew this was coming. The oil and gas market has always been geopolitical, with inherent extreme price volatility, which rocks the world in times of crisis.
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“Previous responses have been to explore and develop more oil and gas, setting ourselves up for the next crisis in which the oil and gas companies reap super profits while consumers reap the misery. When will we learn?
“Consumers, manufacturers and everyone in the economy are now being squeezed by soaring fossil fuel prices. We must turn our back on traditional self-serving responses and accelerate our investments in renewable energy and storage to help protect ourselves from volatility, lower our emissions, create new industries and become more self-sufficient.
“The Albanese government has a strong mandate for game-changing climate action. We need to see them put that into action now, to protect households and businesses from future price shocks and to strengthen our economy into the future.”
Johanna Bowyer, lead research analyst Australian electricity at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis said, “Australia is seeing astronomical energy prices due to high international coal and gas prices driven by sanctions on Russia, outages at Australian coal fired power plants, and Australian coal supply issues.
“Some solutions to this situation include increasing the energy efficiency of households, accelerating the build out of renewables, storage and transmission, facilitating an orderly exit of increasingly unreliable coal generators, and protecting domestic gas users from being exposed to high international gas prices by redirecting a small proportion of exports to the domestic market.”
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Energy Synapse managing director Marija Petkovic said, “The extremely high prices we are seeing in the wholesale electricity market are being driven by high coal and gas prices as well as ongoing outages at several coal-fired power stations. What this energy crisis shows more than anything is that Australia needs to urgently put politics aside and get on with the job of building vastly more renewable energy and energy storage to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
“Australia is blessed with some of the best renewable energy resources in the world as well as the space to harness them. This could be our biggest competitive advantage for decades to come.”
