The Consequences of Retail Electricity Price Rises: Rethinking Customer Hardship

Abstract

The Australian energy sector is nearing the end of an investment megacycle, which has driven above-trend electricity tariff increases. In this article, we combine energy market and demographic data and find that the dominant thought on customer hardship, aged pensioners, pales into insignificance by comparison to those in the Family Formation cohort, those known as Australia's 'working poor'. Our modelling results are clear in their implications: hardship policy for energy customers requires re-engineering. The structure of electricity tariffs requires an overhaul - shifting to interval meters, time-of-use pricing and monthly billing to redress the investment megacycle and the incidence of hardship.