Australian electricity prices will increase by 35% in a matter of months as a result of the switch to renewable energy sources and the closure of coal power facilities, according to energy merchants.
According to the current market pricing, tariffs would increase by at least 35% in the next year, Alinta CEO Jeff Dimery said on Monday at a conference in Sydney.
It’s awful and disgusting. Energy users should not light their electricity bills on fire once they get them.
We now have significant problems with electricity price. And I believe that the general people will become more aware of it,’ he said at the Energy and Climate conference.
Frank Calabria, CEO of Origin Energy, predicted that when new tariffs are imposed in July of next year, power costs would rise significantly “based on current wholesale rates.”
Mark Collette, the CEO of EnergyAustralia, also predicted that rising wholesale costs will result in much higher consumer bills.
Simply by looking at the wholesale markets and purchasing, he said, “retail energy is what you sell, and you have to purchase the energy in the wholesale market.”
Just go back a year: the wholesale price of energy has increased by a factor of four, from $60 to $240 per megawatt hour.
According to the current ACCC netback, gas has increased from $10 per gigajoule to $50. That is a significant increase of four or five times. Tariffs are under a lot of increased pressure as a result.
One of the summit’s smaller suppliers, Momentum Energy, concurred that there will be price increases.
According to the managing director of the company, Lisa Chiba, “I believe we all know there are going to be substantial increases next year.”