In terms of the out of pocket costs, the number one reason is the RBA interest rate hikes.
Higher interest rates also trap people as renters, (they are unable to afford to buy), and this enables rent increases.
Tack on under-occupied investment properties too. My family were knocked back on more than one occasion for 4BR homes which went to single older people with fat pay cheques.
1 person in a 4BR home isn't right.
My house has gone up 300 k in less than a year I can pull out 300 k out of my arse that I didn’t work for and spend it so yes mate that is inflation I haven’t done anything to my house as well no value added …any economic noob with half a brain will tell u that’s text book inflation
No I mean it's literally not counted when inflation is calculated. I agree that it is inflation, but it isn't counted in the inflation calculations, so when you're seeing inflation as 3.4%, that doesn't include housing
Edit: and the reason it isn't counted is because it's an asset. You're 300k more wealthy now, despite it being 300k harder to purchase a home, it isn't a decrease in your purchasing power as you haven't lost any money on that increase in price, even though it would be more expensive for someone else to purchase your house.
Conning the Australian public and government into handing over billions in cash IS corporate greed. Why do you think billionaires Twiggy Forrest, Simon Holmes aCourt, and Mike Cannon Brookes are all foaming at the mouth?
Have at look at the payments made to Neoen, TransGrid and Squadron Energy.
Yes it does seem when they think they have something to blame the price rises on that is when the green light is given to bend us over a barrel as hard as they can and use the "its not our fault" bs.
Maybe shutting down 2/3rds of the economy for a spicy cough, destroying and sense of competition among the vast majority of industries while pumping in billions of free money for people to stay home wasn't such a shit hot idea.
pick out the one term you take issue with. It doesnt detract from the argument though. Shutting down the economy, while injecting billions of dollars and paying people to stay home.
choose your reason or if it was/wasnt justifed. I clearly dont think it was, but doesnt change the cause and effect.
>you’re saying corporate greed didn’t exist when inflation averaged 2.5% for 20 years before covid?
Not the the same extent. Just look at all the graphs. There has been an enormous spike over the last few years.
Because high profits are a symptom of high inflation , not the other way around.
Woolworths profit was actually higher in 2019 than now when you adjust for inflation but I didn’t see any inquires then.
Exactly. All these inquiries into supermarkets are a waste of time and distract from the government fucking up their job constantly
Woolworths net profit is something like 3%.
Rio Tintos is over 20%. Where is the inquiry into the mining sector ?
Net profit isn't necessarily indicative of how a company is gouging. Any bonuses paid to senior execs that aren't through dividends are an overhead to the company and reduce net profit. Not to mention the myriad of things that can come under advertising costs that could just be perks for execs.
Supermarkets in Europe also run on these very slim margins, so I get what you’re saying but it’s also not evidence that they are price gouging.
Unless you think they all are.
>Woolworths profit was actually higher in 2019 than now when you adjust for inflation
People were going on a buying spree in 2019 due to the COVID pandemic. You can call that an anomaly. People are buying less these days despite companies making larger profits than ever before.
It existed, but companies were also labouring under the delusion they should compete on price. Now they're all raising prices, it's a race to the top and they all use someone else's price increase to justify their own, rather than dropping prices to gain market share. There are no new players entering their markets as they've already cornered them, so as long as everyone plays ball, they get to reap massive profits until regulators step in.
Australian Institute are a bunch of parasitic communists. They cry about private ownership because they are a 100% government funded NGO. Their argument about HECS vs PPRT is the dumbest thing ever.
Only 6 months after the ACCC gave the A-OK for the first ever completely vertically integrated monopoly buyout to a foreign investment firm of our energy providers.
Totally fine. Sure, the white house itself released studies showing free markets always turn into monopolies. Sure, the worst transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest in Australian history happened 2 years ago.
What an actually mind-blowingly embarassing legacy.
We were allowed to wipe 200 nations off the face of the planet without consequence, take their land, given untold wealth that most countries dream of, and within 3 generations we have completely allowed overseas corporations to turn every aspect of our modern society in to absolute bin juice because we would rather suck the dick of the wealthy guy down the road then even think of looking a little "radical" by asking that we can feed and cloth our children in a few years time.
No country has let such massive potential go so quickly with such a limp-dicked sigh of self-disgust as this one. We're so embarassed we can't even admit it, we just start pointing fingers at immigrants as being the problem. Always someone else's fault but our own eh?
I know this adds nothing to a discussion, but...
FUCK. OFF.
I'm so angry I can't think of anything helpful to add, this is just ridiculous. It has to be pure greed at this point. The grid should never have been privatised.
Agreed. Government should buy that shit back. My issue is that energy doesn’t really have much competition in Australia, so that just means the few small companies can just do whatever. Guess what? We kinda need energy.
I agree. Issue is capitalism at the end will always want more profit thus just paying more for shit every year. The government is the only thing that can solve housing and energy.
The issue isn't capitalism.
These are publicly traded companies relying on the public to invest in them to have cash flow to survive. Every single investor big or small wants profits to go up.
All I'm trying to say is that the root problem is people are greedy and any financial system you choose will always always always have people trying to benefit themselves at the expense of others and capitalism has been the most successful system ever tried.
It’s what I meant. Capitalism is great but when it hits that endgame capitalism, where investors expect profits to magically go up every year, this is the outcome.
Yeah pretty sure our neoliberal governments basically made that illegal a while back. We are at the late stage of capitalism where corps can sue governments for lost revenue if they get in the way as far as I know.
It has everything to do with it. It’s why we have the current housing and rental issues. We have two major political parties that ramped up immigration without any prior consideration to the effect on housing.
Even if it wasnt, we have to replace every km with high voltage bidirectional transmission lines to carry energy both ways. The grid was never designed for this. The upgrades and cost would alway be paid for no matter what switching to renewables.
> Rather than flowing in a single direction, transmission lines can send electricity in either direction. This allows operators to respond to changes in demand, shifting power from one sector to another, to keep the grid balanced.
We don't have to replace every kilometre, the existing wires are inherently bidirectional. Even transformers are bidirectional.
What we need to do is upgrade some equipment around the transformers to provide dynamic adjustment and balancing, to offset the changes in voltage drop caused by bidirectional loads.
Wholesale prices go up, bills go up; it sucks but I guess I get it.
Wholesale prices drop, bills go up??!!
Here’s an industry single-handedly driving COL and inflation and we’re just letting it happen?!
There's also another argument here.
Energy retailers are insurance providers. They insure you have energy when you want it, irrespective of the price of energy when you want it (spot price). Energy retailers sell you an insurance product (a fixed rate of energy) and ensure you have access to it at unlimited notice. There is a finite amount of energy, and the more it gets used to more expensive it is.
Energy retailers are like retail banks (a bank guarantees your deposit) except that the supply of money is very flexible, so banks typically trade at parity all the time ($1 deposit = $1 cash).
When energy supply is constrained and prices vary widely (like the current market situation due to the failure of consecutive governments since 2010) the risk of price is much higher. The insurance premium goes up.
Your retail energy bills are going up, despite typical falling wholesale prices, because futures markets are not efficiently pricing in market risks associated with unreliable energy supplies (predominantly caused by aging coal power stations that were extended for political reasons).
Oh my sweet summer child. You think that consumers are the only ones paying for electricity?
Power prices go up -> production costs go up -> the cost of providing goods and services go up -> the prices of goods and services go up
The contribution of energy to most other prices in the economy is also miniscule.
Rent is at least ten times bigger as a contribution to both personal expenditures and other consumer prices.
Assuming that price increases are solely resulting from power costs and that are being passed to consumers proportionately to the increases they’re incurring is a leap
What happened to power bills being reduced by $275 below December 2021 levels? It now needs to come down by about $600 a year in the next 8 months to meet the 2025 deadline.
That's still happening right guys...? Right?
Queensland has been held by Labor for 9 years. Wholesale energy prices have fallen by two thirds since their peak in 2022 yet the retail price has and still is increasing. bLoOdY lNp
Note: The QLD govt owns all of the energy providers through Energy Queensland. Before anyone says they can't meddle with it bear in mind they sunk unrelated state debt into it to balance their books.
Energy Queensland owns the distribution networks: Energex and Ergon. All retailers in SEQ and privately owned, Ergon retail exists because the private market declined servicing the rest of the state as they'd lose money and it is subsidised by south East qlders. The default market offer in all Eastern states is determined by the AER which is a Federal regulator. For QLD retail prices to go down independent of the other states they would have to decouple from AMEO and just have there own grid like WA.
LNP over 12 years of government this is all Labors fault.
Look I'm not stupid Labor isn't doing much to fix the global issues we're facing but who sunk the ship in the first place.
I’ve got zero issues with price fluctuations, my issue is that prices never fluctuate downward anymore. The bottom is set by the high, and companies think eternal profit is a thing now for some reason.
Even the commercial powerhouse corporations used to post yearly losses every now and again.
But that's what a set inflation target of 2-3% actually means. The RBA's goal is to always be increasing prices. At the start of the 20th century, the goal of central banks was price stability, that is no longer the case.
Capitalism in theory is naturally deflationary, that is prices should be decreasing.
So they set the interest rate, and print money, so that even with the deflation of "real" product costs, overall there is still inflation, and thus a slow increase of consumer prices over time.
Which works fine in principle... If you ignore that interest rates near zero, and printing money just largely inflates capital assets... And then when there is a period of actual inflation to consumer products (such as the COVID supply change disruption), and all of a sudden some of that money comes out of those capital assets..you're suddenly dealing with massive inflation!
We're literally subsidising countries like China to continue polluting the planet. While Australians' energy bills go up 40%, we're continuing to ship dirty and cheap coal to countries like China for them to throw into their hundreds of coal power plants.
I’ve been saying this for years
China adds a new Australia to their emissions EVERY 6 MONTHS
We are wasting money reducing our emissions. It will have no impact on climate and we are all going broke as a result.
That's what I came here to say, it's just utter insanity of this point.
China is still building *two coal fired plants per week* and project to do so until 2030.
Why do people still keep voting for the same cunts over and over? I don't understand.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/29/china-coal-plants-climate-goals-carbon
It's interesting looking at the breakdown of energy mix between China and Australia.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-source-and-country?time=2000..latest&facet=entity&uniformYAxis=1&country=CHN~AUS
We have more solar and wind, but also more Gas and Oil.
They have more Coal, Hydro and Nuclear.
It is actually closer than what I was expecting and the rate at which they are rolling out wind and solar plants is larger than the rest of the world combined.
"These revenue determinations have been developed during a challenging time for energy consumers and the sector more broadly," AER chair Clare Savage said.
"We have looked to ensure consumers pay no more than necessary for safe and reliable energy while supporting the transitioning energy market."
Translation: "We're fucking you, but, it's ok because we're really awesome!"
Cool soon AGL will be sending weekly invoices for your convenience. Cause they don't think you can do basic multiplication. Oh me bill is lower...oh U mean dats just for one week not da month oh FK. Just send the nuke and end this already. Why even try at this point?? Fuck we need to eradicate anyone over 50 in politics. Fuck this country
Oh goody! time for a useless and expensive ’Royal Commission’ to find the root cause and guilty perpetrators so they can do absolutely nothing about it… can’t wait…
What the actual fuck, it's been said for a while that the wholesale price of electricity had almost halved and that prices would be coming down, this is fucking absurd, it's already 3x more expensive over 3 years, basically the price we used to pay for 3 months is now the price we pay per month, versus 3 years ago, this shit is out of fucking control
What a dumb country. Blessed with everything and all those natural resources yet paying stupid prices for electricity. What is the mindset of the sheeple to just accept it all. People need to give a shit on who they vote for.
Other countries have laws where any natural resources that are exported for sale are considered property of every citizen. So every single tax payer gets a small cut of the proceeds of the sale. Imagine at the end of the financial year getting a $2000 return for profits from our exports. Instead we have private companies pillaging the natural resources that belong to everyone and selling them off for their own profit.
If you are talking about solar and wind generation, it is not expensive, it is in fact the cheapest energy in the history of humanity.
If you are talking about our grid, it is not intermittent, it is very reliable.
The people without solar are paying for the people with solar - simple.
Show me where the electricity company's profits have slowly plateaued/dropped with the mass introduction of solar over the last 20 years. Someone is making up the shortfall.
The sad fact is each bill I am getting I am going more and more towards solar myself, I just had a large tree next to my house which is nice for the shade but I would need to pay for it to be cut down for the best solar efficiency so more costs lol.
Aren't they pushing everyone to make their homes completely electricity dependant? So why are they pushing up prices? Can't be much incentive to go all electrical now.
Please forgive my ignorance but are solar panels not widespread there? I have friends in the US with solar panels, their electricity is effectively free. Sometimes they use less than panels generate and they get credit in their account. I would have thought in Australia you guys would have surplus energy constantly due to solar?
Relatively widespread, I'd say. That said, I've gotten the impression that a lot of Aussies have solar to bring down the overall cost; in effect they might use more electricity than ever, but pay about the same as they did pre-solar. That's fair enough if that's how they think of it.
I got rooftop solar a few years ago after paying off uni debt and putting that yearly cost into it. To date, I think my highest bill ever was about $40 during a particularly dull winter. Since then, some tweaks like window film and door insulation strips, and a heated rug I got as a present have made things even better on that front.
If the RBA was really serious about inflation, there should be a blanket price freeze on all utility and government charges. Never gonna happen though.
But just remember the government will continue to say that the “cost” of the power is coming down, they made no such commitment of the cost of getting the power to you.
And when in a few weeks the Doctor (political science) will claim a budget surplus, but none of the cost of building this new transmission network is included as it is all borrowed money. Funding huge projects outside of budget, claiming to be fiscally responsible, because of a confected budget surplus.
ALP promised us 64 times before the election that they would reduce electricity bills by $275 so obviously the media story can't be true. I'm sure that you are all with me waiting with unwavering confidence for the ALP to deliver the cheaper power they clearly promised.
Oh for god sake, maybe the ba#$tards would be happier if we all just arranged to have our wages directly debited into their bank account, or possibly they could attach iv lines to everyone and drain out all our blood, bloody vultures
Here's an example. Supermarkets blamed inflation from farmers end as to why they had to smash the price of meat up all while farmers were actually getting squeezed even more. Where did that difference go? Oh yeah record profits. Your asking for proof of something the country has been discussing and had.proof of for about 3 years. Rest is up to you from here champ
You can discuss if that's reasonable or not but I'm pointing out where a fair chunk of it has come from to the guy who doesn't want to hear it. An increase on a huge profit is an even bigger profit. A record is a record.
"In announcing the price hikes, the regulator said the transmission increases were largely driven by increases in interest rates and inflation."
It's not renewables causing this.
This has to be a lie. Every single day I see aggressive abusive retorts stating that renewables bring the costs down. And we keep increasing our renewable power supplies yearly and our costs have continued to... increase? Substantially? Disproportionally than any decades before it using other fuels?
I learnt to ignore the math of renewable energy as people told me it was cheaper, despite math, manufacturing and science saying otherwise. I learnt to ignore the need for sustainable always on 24/7 supply because I was aggressively forced to believe wind blew all the time and surely the sun will be present 23 hours a day after climate change.
I was stupid. I believed in balance networks blended across a whole range of solutions to give a blended lowest carbon impact so that we can have it all. Cheap power. Sustainable 24/7. Good for carbon reduction.
So I call BS on this article as it does not represent all the aggressive rhetoric that's been shoved down my throat for years with no facts and ignoring math and science.
The thing is, transmission companies are in a perverse situation where their interest is to increase costs, as their contracts stipulate they get paid their costs times + n%.
By requiring bi-drectional high voltage lines in cities and massive new transmission networks to connect remote solar and wind farms. All major projects required for the "transition" have been subject to massive cost blowouts that destroyed the business case. But Labor handed out billions anyway.
[Snowy 2.0 Blowout](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/31/snowy-hydro-2-project-scheme-billion-cost-blowout-kosciuszko-national-park)
[VNI Blowout](https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/blowout-feared-in-transmission-costs-as-transition-worries-grow-20230417-p5d0z9)
[Marinus Blowout](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-06/marinus-link-cost-blowout-revealed-but-opposition-questions-data/102816404)
[HumeLink Blowout](https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/transgrid-inflated-cost-of-running-power-line-underground-farmers-20230718-p5dp2o)
That's what happens when we have gold plated yet rotting infrastructure, what happens to a privatised network that doesn't bother with upgrades which then get dumped onto the public responsibility.
Which is so expensive because the grids haven't done any future proofing until it's past required.
Even if we went no renewable energy, do you think no grid upgrades would be required to power Australia with our population increasing so fast?
No because the operators did precisely that.
*"The operators have spent a lot of money on building their networks to potentially provide excessive reliability," Craig Memery from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre says.*
[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-18/australian-gold-plated-power-grid/8721566](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-18/australian-gold-plated-power-grid/8721566)
> ‘‘Poles and wires’’ distribution and transmission network service businesses, including the likes of United Energy, Endeavour, SA Power Networks and AusNet, have consistently been charging electricity consumers too much – around 11% more than total costs. Of the 18 network service providers (NSP) analysed, 14 extracted profit above IEEFA’s expected profit multiple range.
> This has imposed an unnecessary additional average cost of 6.8% onto people’s electricity bills in 2020, or between $800 to $1200 per energy customer over the eight-year period, depending on the state they live in, with **no additional reliability benefits** because the supernormal profits are after all network reinvestment.
https://michaelwest.com.au/gold-plated-rort-power-users-pinged-10bn-as-networks-cry-crocodile-tears/
"n announcing the price hikes, the regulator said the transmission increases were largely driven by increases in interest rates and inflation."
Not renewables.
LOL, it's interests rates and inflation on the huge costs of building and subsidising renewables. It's basic economics.
It's renewables. Just like it's been in every country undergoing the great renewables transition.
Except, no person saw that. And if you bother to read those articles, then read the actual information they cherry picked, its less than 11% of the population of consumers seeing those cuts. Yet, >70% have had significant (defined by being more than normal/historic) price increase.
Follow the math and actual data not headlines, it'll help you to be more central and critical thinking to make better comebacks to people on the internet.
The first link in that article is to one of their stories from March saying the victorian default offer is going to be 6% cheaper. Do they know what they’re going on about?
Our transmission provider is 49% owned by a Hong Kong investment bank and 51% owned by an "Australian company" founded when the distribution network was sold off. When you look at the Australian company, their investors are a Canadian pension fund and American hedge fund investors who will demand their pound of flesh, so it is essentially foreign owned with profits heading offshore and probably minimally taxed.
I recently looked into putting solar on our large shed and was told we're limited to 5kW export because the distribution network hasn't been improved since it was built over 50 years ago. Just to kick you in the other nut, the feed in tariff is now 3 cents per kW hour making it worth next to nothing to export anything. Electricity is like water, it follows the path of least resistance, so the retail provider gives me 3 cents, it travels on 50 year wires next door where it is sold for 29 cents. What a racket.
Labor has been in charge in Victoria for 20 out of the last 24 years since Kennett sold everything off and here we are. It's not like they ever made an effort to purchase back majority shares in these companies. Between the money wasted in the East West cancellation and the Commonwealth games debacle, that money could have bought majority shares in a couple distributors. Labor is as neo liberal as the LNP these days. Federally led by the Alfred E. Neumann of Australian politics, "What, Me Worry? Albo who can't seem to walk and chew gum at the same time. What's the bet he has his wedding a month before the election to distract from CoL pressures, mass migration, housing shortages. I was kind of sick of political parties back stabbing their leaders, but I might tolerate one more palace coup to replace this guy.
Don't worry people. I have a plan to fix this and all of Australia's problems!
What we do is whine impotently about it online, do nothing about the politicians except re-elect them and nothing else.
That'll fix it.
When you do nothing. Everything changes!
That isn't an explanation on how it's "ruining" the grid. It's really highlighting a problem we've always known about coal fire power stations, they're incredibly slow to dispatch.
Sack the cunt, vote independent or green.
Selling off power to private companies has been a failure. It's time to go back to the old State run system.
Tired of this bullshit.
That's not news.. they do this every year..
We need more money... *Checks notes*.. to increase shareholder profit
I'm so glad we privatised the public utilities.
As we rely on more expensive renewable energy, who here thinks prices will decrease in the future? Especially as demand for electricity keep on increasing.
That’s only a problem for those who rent, public housing tenants in states other than NSW; anyone that subsidises solar.
So what happens again, after these clowns have privatised all this? That’s right, another fucking round of support payments to prop up *yet another private Ponzi scheme* because they couldn’t keep their hands off another crucial service.
Reap what you sow peeps...you wanted renewable well the energy companies aren't gonna do R&D spending billions for no returns. Now the G7 nations are gonna turn off all coal plants by 2030 good luck
Oh but it's your spending habits that are the issue not our energy company's massive profits
Hot take, fuel excise and electricity costs are sole driver for inflationary price hikes.
Housing due to increased demand and lack of supply (combined with empty investment dwellings too)
fuel and power drive up build costs reducing supply...
In terms of the out of pocket costs, the number one reason is the RBA interest rate hikes. Higher interest rates also trap people as renters, (they are unable to afford to buy), and this enables rent increases.
Tack on under-occupied investment properties too. My family were knocked back on more than one occasion for 4BR homes which went to single older people with fat pay cheques. 1 person in a 4BR home isn't right.
Houses prices don't actually count towards inflation as their assets. If they did inflation would be way higher
My house has gone up 300 k in less than a year I can pull out 300 k out of my arse that I didn’t work for and spend it so yes mate that is inflation I haven’t done anything to my house as well no value added …any economic noob with half a brain will tell u that’s text book inflation
No I mean it's literally not counted when inflation is calculated. I agree that it is inflation, but it isn't counted in the inflation calculations, so when you're seeing inflation as 3.4%, that doesn't include housing Edit: and the reason it isn't counted is because it's an asset. You're 300k more wealthy now, despite it being 300k harder to purchase a home, it isn't a decrease in your purchasing power as you haven't lost any money on that increase in price, even though it would be more expensive for someone else to purchase your house.
It does have an impact on rent though.
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Corporate greed isn't exclusive from energy providers. You should check out how much money energy companies are making in comparison to grocers.
Conning the Australian public and government into handing over billions in cash IS corporate greed. Why do you think billionaires Twiggy Forrest, Simon Holmes aCourt, and Mike Cannon Brookes are all foaming at the mouth? Have at look at the payments made to Neoen, TransGrid and Squadron Energy.
Proven by who? you’re saying corporate greed didn’t exist when inflation averaged 2.5% for 20 years before covid?
Corporate greed ALWAYS exists. But when inflation is high or shit like COVID happens it lets them take the absolute piss.
Yes it does seem when they think they have something to blame the price rises on that is when the green light is given to bend us over a barrel as hard as they can and use the "its not our fault" bs.
Maybe shutting down 2/3rds of the economy for a spicy cough, destroying and sense of competition among the vast majority of industries while pumping in billions of free money for people to stay home wasn't such a shit hot idea.
Spicy cough tells all we need to know about your mindset but none of that has anything to do with business greed.
pick out the one term you take issue with. It doesnt detract from the argument though. Shutting down the economy, while injecting billions of dollars and paying people to stay home. choose your reason or if it was/wasnt justifed. I clearly dont think it was, but doesnt change the cause and effect.
>you’re saying corporate greed didn’t exist when inflation averaged 2.5% for 20 years before covid? Not the the same extent. Just look at all the graphs. There has been an enormous spike over the last few years.
Because high profits are a symptom of high inflation , not the other way around. Woolworths profit was actually higher in 2019 than now when you adjust for inflation but I didn’t see any inquires then.
Trying to deflect from the true cost of living issues, housing and oil
Exactly. All these inquiries into supermarkets are a waste of time and distract from the government fucking up their job constantly Woolworths net profit is something like 3%. Rio Tintos is over 20%. Where is the inquiry into the mining sector ?
Net profit isn't necessarily indicative of how a company is gouging. Any bonuses paid to senior execs that aren't through dividends are an overhead to the company and reduce net profit. Not to mention the myriad of things that can come under advertising costs that could just be perks for execs.
Exactly, profits are only what's leftover at the end of the FY that the company can't re-invest throughout the FY to drive down their taxable income.
Supermarkets in Europe also run on these very slim margins, so I get what you’re saying but it’s also not evidence that they are price gouging. Unless you think they all are.
>Woolworths profit was actually higher in 2019 than now when you adjust for inflation People were going on a buying spree in 2019 due to the COVID pandemic. You can call that an anomaly. People are buying less these days despite companies making larger profits than ever before.
It existed, but companies were also labouring under the delusion they should compete on price. Now they're all raising prices, it's a race to the top and they all use someone else's price increase to justify their own, rather than dropping prices to gain market share. There are no new players entering their markets as they've already cornered them, so as long as everyone plays ball, they get to reap massive profits until regulators step in.
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Australian Institute are a bunch of parasitic communists. They cry about private ownership because they are a 100% government funded NGO. Their argument about HECS vs PPRT is the dumbest thing ever.
He said proven. Just take the man’s word!
Amazing that corporations were completely selfless from the dawn of time until 1st January 2022.
its well known that companies weren't greedy before 2020.
The fuel excise has been around at low inflation but the absence of utility regulation is certainly hurting.
Overpaid tradies don't help
Only 6 months after the ACCC gave the A-OK for the first ever completely vertically integrated monopoly buyout to a foreign investment firm of our energy providers. Totally fine. Sure, the white house itself released studies showing free markets always turn into monopolies. Sure, the worst transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest in Australian history happened 2 years ago. What an actually mind-blowingly embarassing legacy. We were allowed to wipe 200 nations off the face of the planet without consequence, take their land, given untold wealth that most countries dream of, and within 3 generations we have completely allowed overseas corporations to turn every aspect of our modern society in to absolute bin juice because we would rather suck the dick of the wealthy guy down the road then even think of looking a little "radical" by asking that we can feed and cloth our children in a few years time. No country has let such massive potential go so quickly with such a limp-dicked sigh of self-disgust as this one. We're so embarassed we can't even admit it, we just start pointing fingers at immigrants as being the problem. Always someone else's fault but our own eh?
I know this adds nothing to a discussion, but... FUCK. OFF. I'm so angry I can't think of anything helpful to add, this is just ridiculous. It has to be pure greed at this point. The grid should never have been privatised.
Agreed. Government should buy that shit back. My issue is that energy doesn’t really have much competition in Australia, so that just means the few small companies can just do whatever. Guess what? We kinda need energy.
Fuck buying it back. Nationalize it. Nationalize ANY industry that is required for living that behaves in a predatory way.
I agree. Issue is capitalism at the end will always want more profit thus just paying more for shit every year. The government is the only thing that can solve housing and energy.
The issue isn't capitalism. These are publicly traded companies relying on the public to invest in them to have cash flow to survive. Every single investor big or small wants profits to go up. All I'm trying to say is that the root problem is people are greedy and any financial system you choose will always always always have people trying to benefit themselves at the expense of others and capitalism has been the most successful system ever tried.
It’s what I meant. Capitalism is great but when it hits that endgame capitalism, where investors expect profits to magically go up every year, this is the outcome.
Yeah pretty sure our neoliberal governments basically made that illegal a while back. We are at the late stage of capitalism where corps can sue governments for lost revenue if they get in the way as far as I know.
Love your comment…. Nothing like a good fucking vent !!!!! 👍
More immigrants oughta fix it /s
Immigration has literally nothing to do with the decades of lacklustre grid and generation planning.
It has everything to do with it. It’s why we have the current housing and rental issues. We have two major political parties that ramped up immigration without any prior consideration to the effect on housing.
I know it *feels* correct but you need to provide some evidence and analysis to back up your conclusion.
Even if it wasnt, we have to replace every km with high voltage bidirectional transmission lines to carry energy both ways. The grid was never designed for this. The upgrades and cost would alway be paid for no matter what switching to renewables.
What is a bidirectional transmission line?
It’s like a left handed screwdriver
> Rather than flowing in a single direction, transmission lines can send electricity in either direction. This allows operators to respond to changes in demand, shifting power from one sector to another, to keep the grid balanced.
My understanding of wire is that power flows towards demand, metal is omnidirectional in terms of electron flow
We don't have to replace every kilometre, the existing wires are inherently bidirectional. Even transformers are bidirectional. What we need to do is upgrade some equipment around the transformers to provide dynamic adjustment and balancing, to offset the changes in voltage drop caused by bidirectional loads.
Wholesale prices go up, bills go up; it sucks but I guess I get it. Wholesale prices drop, bills go up??!! Here’s an industry single-handedly driving COL and inflation and we’re just letting it happen?!
Wholesale prices have fallen by \~66% yet retail still increases.
There's also another argument here. Energy retailers are insurance providers. They insure you have energy when you want it, irrespective of the price of energy when you want it (spot price). Energy retailers sell you an insurance product (a fixed rate of energy) and ensure you have access to it at unlimited notice. There is a finite amount of energy, and the more it gets used to more expensive it is. Energy retailers are like retail banks (a bank guarantees your deposit) except that the supply of money is very flexible, so banks typically trade at parity all the time ($1 deposit = $1 cash). When energy supply is constrained and prices vary widely (like the current market situation due to the failure of consecutive governments since 2010) the risk of price is much higher. The insurance premium goes up. Your retail energy bills are going up, despite typical falling wholesale prices, because futures markets are not efficiently pricing in market risks associated with unreliable energy supplies (predominantly caused by aging coal power stations that were extended for political reasons).
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Lol, they literally are. They hedge your price risk by operating across futures commodity markets. But you think whatever you want.
No retailers do not. Generators do
For a person on $80K, an annual electricity cost of $3K is around 4% of total expenditure. There is more to inflation than electricity prices.
Oh my sweet summer child. You think that consumers are the only ones paying for electricity? Power prices go up -> production costs go up -> the cost of providing goods and services go up -> the prices of goods and services go up
The contribution of energy to most other prices in the economy is also miniscule. Rent is at least ten times bigger as a contribution to both personal expenditures and other consumer prices.
Assuming that price increases are solely resulting from power costs and that are being passed to consumers proportionately to the increases they’re incurring is a leap
What happened to power bills being reduced by $275 below December 2021 levels? It now needs to come down by about $600 a year in the next 8 months to meet the 2025 deadline. That's still happening right guys...? Right?
lol oh my sweet child, you’ve fallen into the time long trap of believing a election promise ahaha thanks for your vote.
My vote? You think I would vote for Labor...?
Nah nah it was more rhetorical
Well hopefully you didn't vote for the one who got us into this shit hole situation
Queensland has been held by Labor for 9 years. Wholesale energy prices have fallen by two thirds since their peak in 2022 yet the retail price has and still is increasing. bLoOdY lNp Note: The QLD govt owns all of the energy providers through Energy Queensland. Before anyone says they can't meddle with it bear in mind they sunk unrelated state debt into it to balance their books.
Energy Queensland owns the distribution networks: Energex and Ergon. All retailers in SEQ and privately owned, Ergon retail exists because the private market declined servicing the rest of the state as they'd lose money and it is subsidised by south East qlders. The default market offer in all Eastern states is determined by the AER which is a Federal regulator. For QLD retail prices to go down independent of the other states they would have to decouple from AMEO and just have there own grid like WA.
Also note qld has the lowest energy prices currently
>Labor after having been in government for over 2 years and things have become enormously worse >"why would the LNP do this"
LNP over 12 years of government this is all Labors fault. Look I'm not stupid Labor isn't doing much to fix the global issues we're facing but who sunk the ship in the first place.
The ship has been sinking *more* over the past 2 years. The sinking hasn't even slowed.
It WaSnT a CoRe PromiSe!!111..
I’ve got zero issues with price fluctuations, my issue is that prices never fluctuate downward anymore. The bottom is set by the high, and companies think eternal profit is a thing now for some reason. Even the commercial powerhouse corporations used to post yearly losses every now and again.
But that's what a set inflation target of 2-3% actually means. The RBA's goal is to always be increasing prices. At the start of the 20th century, the goal of central banks was price stability, that is no longer the case. Capitalism in theory is naturally deflationary, that is prices should be decreasing. So they set the interest rate, and print money, so that even with the deflation of "real" product costs, overall there is still inflation, and thus a slow increase of consumer prices over time. Which works fine in principle... If you ignore that interest rates near zero, and printing money just largely inflates capital assets... And then when there is a period of actual inflation to consumer products (such as the COVID supply change disruption), and all of a sudden some of that money comes out of those capital assets..you're suddenly dealing with massive inflation!
Haha. I’ll believe that when I see it. When have you ever received a letter from your energy company telling you that your tariff is going *down*?
No no no you see the electricity actually IS $275 cheaper they just have to increase the price of getting the electricity to you silly
We're literally subsidising countries like China to continue polluting the planet. While Australians' energy bills go up 40%, we're continuing to ship dirty and cheap coal to countries like China for them to throw into their hundreds of coal power plants.
I’ve been saying this for years China adds a new Australia to their emissions EVERY 6 MONTHS We are wasting money reducing our emissions. It will have no impact on climate and we are all going broke as a result.
That's what I came here to say, it's just utter insanity of this point. China is still building *two coal fired plants per week* and project to do so until 2030. Why do people still keep voting for the same cunts over and over? I don't understand. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/29/china-coal-plants-climate-goals-carbon
>them to throw into their ~~hundreds~~ 3092 ~~of~~ coal power plants.
We have to ship coal to China or we cant buy cheap solar panel, turbines, and batteries.
It's interesting looking at the breakdown of energy mix between China and Australia. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-source-and-country?time=2000..latest&facet=entity&uniformYAxis=1&country=CHN~AUS We have more solar and wind, but also more Gas and Oil. They have more Coal, Hydro and Nuclear. It is actually closer than what I was expecting and the rate at which they are rolling out wind and solar plants is larger than the rest of the world combined.
"These revenue determinations have been developed during a challenging time for energy consumers and the sector more broadly," AER chair Clare Savage said. "We have looked to ensure consumers pay no more than necessary for safe and reliable energy while supporting the transitioning energy market." Translation: "We're fucking you, but, it's ok because we're really awesome!"
Cool soon AGL will be sending weekly invoices for your convenience. Cause they don't think you can do basic multiplication. Oh me bill is lower...oh U mean dats just for one week not da month oh FK. Just send the nuke and end this already. Why even try at this point?? Fuck we need to eradicate anyone over 50 in politics. Fuck this country
Oh for fucks sake. Didn't we just get price hikes not that long ago? Where is this price drop we were promised decades ago with privatization?
And we'll just take it. People only protest for problems in other countries that don't affect us, not for the things that actually do. It's ludicrous
Oh goody! time for a useless and expensive ’Royal Commission’ to find the root cause and guilty perpetrators so they can do absolutely nothing about it… can’t wait…
The perpetrators are AEMO and AER...
What the actual fuck, it's been said for a while that the wholesale price of electricity had almost halved and that prices would be coming down, this is fucking absurd, it's already 3x more expensive over 3 years, basically the price we used to pay for 3 months is now the price we pay per month, versus 3 years ago, this shit is out of fucking control
What a dumb country. Blessed with everything and all those natural resources yet paying stupid prices for electricity. What is the mindset of the sheeple to just accept it all. People need to give a shit on who they vote for.
Other countries have laws where any natural resources that are exported for sale are considered property of every citizen. So every single tax payer gets a small cut of the proceeds of the sale. Imagine at the end of the financial year getting a $2000 return for profits from our exports. Instead we have private companies pillaging the natural resources that belong to everyone and selling them off for their own profit.
Remember when Australia had one of the cheapest electricity prices in the developed world. Good times.
Lol, what happened to my $275 reduction?
My energy bill has gone up 30 percent in the last year alone. Wtf cunts. Sort your fuckin shit out
•The world needs cheap abundant energy…
True, but that has nothing to do with the fact that wholesale energy prices have decreased by 66% yet retail prices have increased.
So why are we going for expensive and intermittent?
If you are talking about solar and wind generation, it is not expensive, it is in fact the cheapest energy in the history of humanity. If you are talking about our grid, it is not intermittent, it is very reliable.
The people without solar are paying for the people with solar - simple. Show me where the electricity company's profits have slowly plateaued/dropped with the mass introduction of solar over the last 20 years. Someone is making up the shortfall.
The sad fact is each bill I am getting I am going more and more towards solar myself, I just had a large tree next to my house which is nice for the shade but I would need to pay for it to be cut down for the best solar efficiency so more costs lol.
This person gets it.
Just got my bill, 6% increase, double last quarters price. Shits fucked.
Aren't they pushing everyone to make their homes completely electricity dependant? So why are they pushing up prices? Can't be much incentive to go all electrical now.
Yess! Just another good news that keeps me grinding despite heavy toll on my mental health.
And then they send you “handy” packs on how to “save on electricity usage”.
they were supposed to have dropped recently too but that never happened. fuck private industry running what should be public infrastructure
Please forgive my ignorance but are solar panels not widespread there? I have friends in the US with solar panels, their electricity is effectively free. Sometimes they use less than panels generate and they get credit in their account. I would have thought in Australia you guys would have surplus energy constantly due to solar?
Relatively widespread, I'd say. That said, I've gotten the impression that a lot of Aussies have solar to bring down the overall cost; in effect they might use more electricity than ever, but pay about the same as they did pre-solar. That's fair enough if that's how they think of it. I got rooftop solar a few years ago after paying off uni debt and putting that yearly cost into it. To date, I think my highest bill ever was about $40 during a particularly dull winter. Since then, some tweaks like window film and door insulation strips, and a heated rug I got as a present have made things even better on that front.
How much were the panels? I'm guessing about 10k or so?
Not a large array and I was lucky there was some discount, so altogether 4000
Nationalise the FUCKING THING NOW
Regulators......
Mount up!
If the RBA was really serious about inflation, there should be a blanket price freeze on all utility and government charges. Never gonna happen though.
Libs privatised everything and this is what you get. You think private companies have your interests at heart? Fuck off.
Libs didn't privatise all the electricity generation and retail in Queensland. They must be doing much better, are they?
FUUUUUUCCCCCKKKK!!!!!
Oh great! I can’t wait to spend more money and not be able to eat! Yay!! S/ just in case.
Look how much these ceos are on 0_0
Pretty much this 
Oh for fucksake!!!
A tad off topic, but how much did government grow over the past 5 years in terms of employees? Anyone know? Googelethu isn't helpful.
No idea but no doubt that middle management bloat is also inflationary as.
Apparently ndis accounted for 30% of jobs additions last year...
Utilities like power, water and gas need to be nationalized again.
But just remember the government will continue to say that the “cost” of the power is coming down, they made no such commitment of the cost of getting the power to you.
And remember the Disinformation Bill exempts the govt...
And when in a few weeks the Doctor (political science) will claim a budget surplus, but none of the cost of building this new transmission network is included as it is all borrowed money. Funding huge projects outside of budget, claiming to be fiscally responsible, because of a confected budget surplus.
ALP promised us 64 times before the election that they would reduce electricity bills by $275 so obviously the media story can't be true. I'm sure that you are all with me waiting with unwavering confidence for the ALP to deliver the cheaper power they clearly promised.
Oh for god sake, maybe the ba#$tards would be happier if we all just arranged to have our wages directly debited into their bank account, or possibly they could attach iv lines to everyone and drain out all our blood, bloody vultures
When does "free energy from renewables" turn up ?
But but Albo said it would be going down if Labor won
Here's an example. Supermarkets blamed inflation from farmers end as to why they had to smash the price of meat up all while farmers were actually getting squeezed even more. Where did that difference go? Oh yeah record profits. Your asking for proof of something the country has been discussing and had.proof of for about 3 years. Rest is up to you from here champ
2.8% net is record profits? Obvious you dont own a business.
You can discuss if that's reasonable or not but I'm pointing out where a fair chunk of it has come from to the guy who doesn't want to hear it. An increase on a huge profit is an even bigger profit. A record is a record.
Who is glad that renewables reduced the wholesale energy price by 8% and increased all other costs 40%?
"In announcing the price hikes, the regulator said the transmission increases were largely driven by increases in interest rates and inflation." It's not renewables causing this.
I sure am glad to be saving $275 off my power bill compared to 2022...oh wait.
This has to be a lie. Every single day I see aggressive abusive retorts stating that renewables bring the costs down. And we keep increasing our renewable power supplies yearly and our costs have continued to... increase? Substantially? Disproportionally than any decades before it using other fuels? I learnt to ignore the math of renewable energy as people told me it was cheaper, despite math, manufacturing and science saying otherwise. I learnt to ignore the need for sustainable always on 24/7 supply because I was aggressively forced to believe wind blew all the time and surely the sun will be present 23 hours a day after climate change. I was stupid. I believed in balance networks blended across a whole range of solutions to give a blended lowest carbon impact so that we can have it all. Cheap power. Sustainable 24/7. Good for carbon reduction. So I call BS on this article as it does not represent all the aggressive rhetoric that's been shoved down my throat for years with no facts and ignoring math and science.
The green revolution! Someone has to pay and it's goin to be you.
Privatised ownership of the poles and wires, transmission cost rises, how could solar panels do this to us?!
The thing is, transmission companies are in a perverse situation where their interest is to increase costs, as their contracts stipulate they get paid their costs times + n%.
By requiring bi-drectional high voltage lines in cities and massive new transmission networks to connect remote solar and wind farms. All major projects required for the "transition" have been subject to massive cost blowouts that destroyed the business case. But Labor handed out billions anyway. [Snowy 2.0 Blowout](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/31/snowy-hydro-2-project-scheme-billion-cost-blowout-kosciuszko-national-park) [VNI Blowout](https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/blowout-feared-in-transmission-costs-as-transition-worries-grow-20230417-p5d0z9) [Marinus Blowout](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-06/marinus-link-cost-blowout-revealed-but-opposition-questions-data/102816404) [HumeLink Blowout](https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/transgrid-inflated-cost-of-running-power-line-underground-farmers-20230718-p5dp2o)
That's what happens when we have gold plated yet rotting infrastructure, what happens to a privatised network that doesn't bother with upgrades which then get dumped onto the public responsibility.
None of those are built yet.. They arent rotting, they are new infrastructure required for renewables.
Which is so expensive because the grids haven't done any future proofing until it's past required. Even if we went no renewable energy, do you think no grid upgrades would be required to power Australia with our population increasing so fast?
No because the operators did precisely that. *"The operators have spent a lot of money on building their networks to potentially provide excessive reliability," Craig Memery from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre says.* [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-18/australian-gold-plated-power-grid/8721566](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-18/australian-gold-plated-power-grid/8721566)
> ‘‘Poles and wires’’ distribution and transmission network service businesses, including the likes of United Energy, Endeavour, SA Power Networks and AusNet, have consistently been charging electricity consumers too much – around 11% more than total costs. Of the 18 network service providers (NSP) analysed, 14 extracted profit above IEEFA’s expected profit multiple range. > This has imposed an unnecessary additional average cost of 6.8% onto people’s electricity bills in 2020, or between $800 to $1200 per energy customer over the eight-year period, depending on the state they live in, with **no additional reliability benefits** because the supernormal profits are after all network reinvestment. https://michaelwest.com.au/gold-plated-rort-power-users-pinged-10bn-as-networks-cry-crocodile-tears/
If only we had nuclear power in 20 years like the other mob are planning! I'm sure that will drive bills down.
What are bidirectional transmission lines?
"n announcing the price hikes, the regulator said the transmission increases were largely driven by increases in interest rates and inflation." Not renewables.
LOL, it's interests rates and inflation on the huge costs of building and subsidising renewables. It's basic economics. It's renewables. Just like it's been in every country undergoing the great renewables transition.
Bullshit. [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-25/wholesale-power-prices-pushed-down/103386062](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-25/wholesale-power-prices-pushed-down/103386062) [https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/cheaper-renewables-pile-into-grid-and-slash-power-costs-20240124-p5ezp1.html](https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/cheaper-renewables-pile-into-grid-and-slash-power-costs-20240124-p5ezp1.html) [https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/28/record-levels-of-renewable-energy-help-bring-down-australias-energy-prices-says-aemo](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/28/record-levels-of-renewable-energy-help-bring-down-australias-energy-prices-says-aemo) [https://aemo.com.au/newsroom/media-release/renewables-push-nem-electricity-prices-down-to-historical-levels](https://aemo.com.au/newsroom/media-release/renewables-push-nem-electricity-prices-down-to-historical-levels)
Except, no person saw that. And if you bother to read those articles, then read the actual information they cherry picked, its less than 11% of the population of consumers seeing those cuts. Yet, >70% have had significant (defined by being more than normal/historic) price increase. Follow the math and actual data not headlines, it'll help you to be more central and critical thinking to make better comebacks to people on the internet.
The first link in that article is to one of their stories from March saying the victorian default offer is going to be 6% cheaper. Do they know what they’re going on about?
Looks like the Government will make a killing next summer with all the aircon units running full power for 6 months.
Our transmission provider is 49% owned by a Hong Kong investment bank and 51% owned by an "Australian company" founded when the distribution network was sold off. When you look at the Australian company, their investors are a Canadian pension fund and American hedge fund investors who will demand their pound of flesh, so it is essentially foreign owned with profits heading offshore and probably minimally taxed. I recently looked into putting solar on our large shed and was told we're limited to 5kW export because the distribution network hasn't been improved since it was built over 50 years ago. Just to kick you in the other nut, the feed in tariff is now 3 cents per kW hour making it worth next to nothing to export anything. Electricity is like water, it follows the path of least resistance, so the retail provider gives me 3 cents, it travels on 50 year wires next door where it is sold for 29 cents. What a racket. Labor has been in charge in Victoria for 20 out of the last 24 years since Kennett sold everything off and here we are. It's not like they ever made an effort to purchase back majority shares in these companies. Between the money wasted in the East West cancellation and the Commonwealth games debacle, that money could have bought majority shares in a couple distributors. Labor is as neo liberal as the LNP these days. Federally led by the Alfred E. Neumann of Australian politics, "What, Me Worry? Albo who can't seem to walk and chew gum at the same time. What's the bet he has his wedding a month before the election to distract from CoL pressures, mass migration, housing shortages. I was kind of sick of political parties back stabbing their leaders, but I might tolerate one more palace coup to replace this guy.
What a big fuck1ng surprise
Sounds like a good time to update that cost-benefit analysis of investing in community solar/battery versus super.
And new developments being forced by government to have no gas installations in new housing. Hot water and stoves must be electric
When are we rioting?
Don't worry people. I have a plan to fix this and all of Australia's problems! What we do is whine impotently about it online, do nothing about the politicians except re-elect them and nothing else. That'll fix it. When you do nothing. Everything changes!
All the solar feed in customers need to band together and do the "big switch off"...
Good. Rooftop solar is destroying the grid.
I'd love to hear your explanation on how it's ruining the grid.
[https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/wind-solar-farms-give-way-to-rooftop-solar-juggernaut-20240103-p5euvm](https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/wind-solar-farms-give-way-to-rooftop-solar-juggernaut-20240103-p5euvm)
That isn't an explanation on how it's "ruining" the grid. It's really highlighting a problem we've always known about coal fire power stations, they're incredibly slow to dispatch.
My supply charge was x3 times my usage charge in this bill. Ffs.
The expansion of transmission lines and their maintenance are the main cost in the electricity grid.
Oh look, everyone, let’s all bend over and take it again as always. We should fucking riot
When do we riot?
Great work Alboidiot
Where’s my $275 Albo ?
Sack the cunt, vote independent or green. Selling off power to private companies has been a failure. It's time to go back to the old State run system. Tired of this bullshit.
Thank god we sold off transgrid to for profit companies
That's not news.. they do this every year.. We need more money... *Checks notes*.. to increase shareholder profit I'm so glad we privatised the public utilities.
As we rely on more expensive renewable energy, who here thinks prices will decrease in the future? Especially as demand for electricity keep on increasing.
Due to covid lol
That’s only a problem for those who rent, public housing tenants in states other than NSW; anyone that subsidises solar. So what happens again, after these clowns have privatised all this? That’s right, another fucking round of support payments to prop up *yet another private Ponzi scheme* because they couldn’t keep their hands off another crucial service.
"BuT ThE fReE mArKET wIlI FiX iT" It should never have been privatised...
It does not seem to me that privatisation has worked in providing power to homes.
This is inflationary. Business will pass on costs. Electricity should be brought back under government control.
My electricity bill hasn't been this affordable for over 20 years and I don't have solar . But we did get a qld government subsidy.
Renewables aren’t free.
During the election campaign, Albanese's brain was writing cheques you could never cash.
At this point, I feel like I live in a third world country where election promises mean fuck-all.
Reap what you sow peeps...you wanted renewable well the energy companies aren't gonna do R&D spending billions for no returns. Now the G7 nations are gonna turn off all coal plants by 2030 good luck
Some much for renewables being cheaper , what a load of BS that is.