Gas and Electricity - Major Publications

The inquiry seeks advice on how Australia can “transition to a green energy superpower”.

The Australian Environment Foundation notes multiple failures where industries designated by governments as being highly prospective have received favourable treatment from tariffs or support through financial assistance. None have succeeded. 

There are several different dimensions of energy policy: • exploration and development of coal, gas, petroleum and uranium resources; • export policies; and • policies concerning the transformation delivery and sale of these and other energy sources (principally hydro, wind and solar). It is this third facet that is the prime concern of this chapter.

Renewable energy and its replacement of conventional electricity supplies ​ In meeting targets agreed at the 2002 Kyoto Convention, the precursor to the Paris Agreement, Australia, by preventing land clearance, reduced emissions by 100 million tonnes a year of CO2 equivalent. Comprising almost 20 per cent of total emissions, this reduction allowed Australia to claim that there had been a negligible increase over the period 1990-2012, 

Summary Government policies, largely involving renewable subsidies, have caused Australian electricity costs and prices to escalate and to become among the highest in the world. The NEG shifts the basis of the deleterious subsidy regime to become an emissions intensity scheme or carbon tax. Though ostensibly responsive to the Paris Agreement, the NEG is actually an industry policy proposal designed further to shift

Government actions have brought about vast increases in Australia’s electricity prices. They have done so by distorting the market through subsidies to wind and solar and by introducing measures prejudicial to cheaper and more reliable coal and gas based electricity.

The report canvassed different options, but of the seven themes identified as showing a future path, only one of these ”Prices have risen substantially in the past five years” can be said unambiguously to be true. Most of the others are palpably false and even the one correct theme is not necessarily a guide to the future unless the policies that have been pursued over the past 16 years continue to be kept in place

Response to written questions on notice for Dr Alan Moran – Regulation Economics from Senator Anne Urquhart 1. In your testimony, you said that work done on fossil fuel subsidies by Treasury has indicated any subsidies are trivial (Hansard, p.24). Can you direct the committee to this work? The following reference http://www.oecd.org/site/tadffss/AUSdata.xls to an OECD review that Treasury oversights shows no support ....

Introduction and Summary: I confine my remarks to the first of the terms of reference, that which addresses the economic effects of windfarms. These effects work through higher electricity prices and through taxes paid to subsidise windpower’s intrinsically high cost

MORAN, Dr Alan John, Chief Executive Officer, Regulation Economics [10:42] Evidence was taken via teleconference— CHAIR: I welcome Dr Alan Moran from Regulation Economics via teleconference. Could you please confirm that the information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses and evidence has been provided to you. Dr Moran: Yes, it has. CHAIR: The committee has your submission. I now invite you to .......

Renewable energy in the form of wind and solar, the two major subsidised supply types, remains non- commercial, at threefold the cost of electricity sourced from coal.

Submission to the Australian Energy Market Commission’s Review of Retail Electricity Market Trends

Book Title: Evolution of Global Electricity Markets

Ministers at the Council of Australian Governments meeting on 7 December 2012 sought a paper at which would examine the regulations under which the Consumer Advocacy Panel “allocates grants to ensure it continues to operate in the interests of energy consumers”. The consultants commissioned to address the issue have published an interim report. This expands the scope and size of the proposal as initially envisaged. 

Book Title: Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

Book Title: Generating electricity in a carbon constrained world

There are several different dimensions of energy policy: • exploration and development of coal, gas, petroleum and uranium resources; • export policies; and • policies concerning the transformation delivery and sale of these and other energy sources (principally hydro, wind and solar). It is this third facet that is the prime concern of this chapter.

The Australian energy market has developed in response to two sets of government decisions. The first was a policy of the Victorian Government to sell its state-owned electricity supply system and to do so in a way that introduced competition wherever this was possible. At the same time, the Commonwealth (federal) Government had determined on a course of introducing competitive provision of electricity, without any commitment to privatisation. 

Book Title: Competitive Electricity Markets: Design, Implementation, Performance

RegulatoRy SubSidieS to Renewable eneRgy in Victoria a submission to the Victorian government’s issues pape

Alan Moran reviews The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, And why we will never run out of energy By Peter W. Huber & Mark P Mills. (Basic Books, 2005, 215 pages)

Submission to the Victorian Department of Infrastructure

Submission to the Productivity Commission Inquiry into Energy Efficiency

The Productivity Commission Report on the gas access regime

Submission to the ACCC’s Review of the Regulatory Test for Network Augmentation

The vigorous process of privatisation which the Kennett Government embarked upon following its election in 1992 radically transformed the Victorian economy. Following many years during which the State was among Australia’s worst performers with low income growth and fiscal mismanagement, the post 1992 period saw it converted to enjoy rapid growth and a sound budgetary position.

Submission to the COAG

Address to the Conference: Energy Regulation and the Role of the Regulators

This paper considers the economic impact of the privatisation of the electricity industry in Victoria. The changes in the Victorian electricity sector have led to increased productivity of capital and labour, improved system reliability, freed up public capital, reduced public debt and reduced final prices. This paper commences with descriptions and evidence of these benefits and then provides a summary of retail electricity prices over the past decade.

Supplementary Submission To The Competition Principles Agreement Productivity Commission's Inquiry Into Clause 6 of the Competition Principles Agreement and Part IIIA of the Trade Practices Act 1974

Submission to the Government on the Essential Services Commission

Submission To: The NECA Transmission Pricing Review

Coal supplies over one quarter of the world’s primary energy, and over 46 per cent of that of Australia. Although oil is a more significant energy source worldwide, consumption of it and gas are less important to Australia.

Prepared for the Office of the Chief Electrical Inspector