Burning money: how forgoing renewables will cost Australians more each year

Australian power bills could increase by 30% for households and 41% for small businesses by 2030 if Australia delays the rollout of renewable energy, as predicted by independent modelling in the latest report by the Clean Energy Council(CEC).

The leading industry body released their new report, “The Impact of a Delayed Transition on Electricity Bills”, on March 5^th; prepared by the global engineering and services firm, Jacobs, warning against the impending “disaster for Australian power prices” if we stall our renewable rollout.

The report compares the Australian Government’s current ambition, striving towards our using 82% renewable energy, with the Federal Coalition’s model which limits renewable energy to just 54%, relying instead on fossil fuels (coal and gas) whilst they roll out nuclear power.

In short, the modelling discovered that relying on coal and gas for another generation would increase the average household energy bill by $449 per year, and $877 per year for a small business, by 2030.

Therefore, stalling deployment of renewable energy would see continued reliance on gas, driving power prices through the roof resulting in, Australians estimated to pay a total of up to $3 billion for the coalition’s gas/electricity model in 2030, opposed to $770 million if we maintain our current course towards renewable dominance.

The report also examined if there was a catastrophic coal plant outage within the next five years which would see household energy bills increase up to $606, and $1,182 for small businesses, per year by 2030.

The report confirms that continuing to deploy and rely on renewable energy is the most effective way to keep wholesale electricity prices as low as possible.

The price of energy bills ranks amongst the top three priorities of Australian voters, according to the Council’s recent polling, with the cost of living set as a key issue in the upcoming federal election.

This report helps to clarify the options and the political parties’ policy impacts on consumers and highlights that any plan to halt renewable energy deployment would be “a disaster” for Australian power prices as stated by CEC’s Kane Thornton.

As Kane Thornton stated: “Clean energy not only works for Australia, but it’s the cheapest path forward for our electricity bills.” If Australians don’t want to see a dramatic increase in their energy bills, renewables are the only way forward.