The Policy Switch Needed to Avert Australia’s Looming Energy Crisis

Australia faces an energy crisis due to an overwhelming reliance on the market to deliver its’ energy needs. It is becoming increasingly evident that the market will not provide adequate generation capacity to meet the growing demand for electricity whilst delivering increasingly unaffordable electricity for more and more Australian households, creating a new form of deprivation called energy poverty. Political indecision on substantive, albeit market-based, policy responses to climate change further threatens Australia’s long term energy security as does a wide range of contradictory and poorly designed public policies. An energy crisis can be averted with timely political decisions to adjust a handful of core policies and establish a holistic policy framework to deliver adequate, reliable, affordable and sustainable energy to all, not a few, Australians.