Via the AFR:
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims has warned the Turnbull government’s National Energy Guarantee could stifle competition in the energy sector or push up prices for businesses and consumers if it was not properly designed.
While the Energy Security Board said competition issues could not be given further consideration until the design of the NEG is more developed, Mr Sims said the ESB needed to ensure competition was at the forefront of its planning sooner rather than later.
It said the ESB needed to take a “cautious approach” to policy changes which would affect the wholesale electricity market, especially contracting and liquidity issues amongst retailers.
Given the ACCC’s dubious history of policing energy consolidation, such a warning has to come with a second tip-off: if the ACCC is worried then it must be shaping as really bad.
Giles Parkinson is very concerned:
Weatherill has left the state with an almost unstoppable momentum. AEMO says 73 per cent renewables will likely happen by 2021, and raises no fears about reliability or security. And it will cut prices – we know that because the Tesla big battery has already done so, dramatically, in just three months.
Of course, it would not be impossible to imagine that Marshall would seek to throw a spanner in the works. He has already done so with Tesla’s planned virtual power plant – the world’s biggest.
In doing so, he has dumped a largely privately funded scheme to install solar and battery storage in the homes of those who needed it most, and replaced it with a government subsidy to install batteries in the homes of people who already had enough money to install solar.
This is breathtakingly cynical or breathtakingly stupid, or both. But it continues the Alice in Wonderland policy path of the Coalition at federal and state levels, where they manage to contradict nearly everything a free-market political party is supposed to stand for.
…Marshall would be better advised to say not much at all about those new projects just now. Hopefully some wise advice might be whispered in his ear about the advantages of increased competition that can be delivered with “dispatchable” renewables.
And there can be no doubting that the biggest objection to the NEG is that it will reduce prices and competition. Even his state’s biggest network operator has raised this as its biggest fear.
Does Marshall really stand for lower bills? One of the attractions of the Tesla virtual power plant would be that it would usher in a new retail competitor in the market that needs it most. The NEG, as currently structured, would ensure there was no new competition.
We still don’t know what the Do-nothing guarantee is but The Greens have seen enough:
The Greens have vowed to block any attempt by the new Marshall Liberal government in South Australia to pass legislation critical to Malcolm Turnbull’s national energy guarantee.
Under the rules governing the national electricity market, South Australia must pass such legislation before other states can adopt it.
A day after the Prime Minister said the chances of the reform passing had improved with the election of a Liberal government in South Australia, the Greens warned they would unite with Labor and any other willing crossbenchers in the state’s Legislative Council to stop it.
Hear, hear.
