Agency

Most households and small businesses are interested in learning more about how they can benefit and make savings from the energy transition. But many of us can’t find the information we need to take action in the places and formats we use, or from sources that we trust. ECA wants to see One Stop Shops for support and advice to help all of us navigate the choices we need to make and understand the role we need to play over the next few years.

We don’t have the full picture of the many types of support that different households and small businesses want and need to be able to participate in the energy transition. Some of us require advice on the energy efficiency of our homes; others need to know how to get the best energy contract, or apply for rebates and concessions, or understand our bills. Some want directions on where to charge our cars, while others will want to know how to source the best hot water heat pump. Ask yourself: what would you want to know to make better decisions?

Many of the highest consumption appliances aren’t governed by minimum efficiency or installation standards so we all make uninformed choices that we pay dearly for later. With increasing household and small business expenses and a wide variety of appliances to choose from, it’s vital we have proper standards and labelling to warn everyone if an appliance is not a good investment. Alongside other consumer and industry associations, we’ve been pushing for this to happen for a long time, and we won’t stop until the job’s completed.

Industry is currently designing all sorts of complex engineering and economic solutions to the challenges that the system is facing. This complexity flows through directly to consumers, who face arcane and confusing pricing and products, and multiple service providers. We need an energy system that recognises the diversity of our needs but understands the critical importance of simplicity in our busy lives. In our view there’s no other service in the country as unnecessarily complicated as energy – and we get the distinct impression that some parts of the sector like it that way. We need to change that.

Put simply, many of us don’t know what meeting Australia’s 2030 decarbonisation targets means for us, or what we need to do because we haven’t been ‘told straight’ what the plan is. An overarching narrative, with the aim of bringing us all together under a unifying vision, is sorely needed from governments and industry. This needs to happen soon because in the absence of a cohesive story, we’re all facing a deluge of misinformation that’s costing many people money as well as their goodwill.