Market Review: Open
Overview
On 25 July 2024, the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) self-initiated a broad, forward-looking review (The Pricing Review) to address the important role that electricity pricing, products, and services will play in supporting the diverse needs of customers, including delivering the consumer energy resources (CER) that is being acquired, and will continue to be acquired, for the energy transition.
The review is examining how markets and regulatory frameworks can provide the products and services that best match consumer preferences, now and into the future.
The review’s key areas of focus are:
- market arrangements that provide for consumer choice between a range of appropriate pricing structures, products, and services that suit their needs and preferences.
- the role of distribution networks in enabling the right incentives, products, and services for consumers, and the efficient cost and pricing outcomes that result.
- the role of retailers and energy service providers in effectively packaging and pricing electricity products and services to match consumer preferences.
The Commission is committed to undertaking the review in an open, collaborative, and transparent manner. This involves making use of existing AEMC forums plus project-specific groups to seek ongoing input from a range of interested stakeholders.
We consider that this is an important review required under the CER roadmap to realise the benefits of CER for all energy consumers, including those without CER, and to support CER integration in the National Electricity Market.
We have released a discussion paper to seek stakeholder feedback.
As the next step in this review, we have published a discussion paper. The purpose of this paper is to test and validate with stakeholders what we have heard on the problems identified, why they are occurring, and whether they will persist in the future in the absence of reform. This paper does not offer recommendations, direction or solutions; these will instead form part of our next steps.
The paper identifies three overarching discussion questions:
- Can we rely on competition in the retail market to deliver the mix of products and services that consumers value?
- How can better outcomes for consumers be enabled through network tariff-setting processes?
- What role can network tariffs play in meeting customer preferences while also contributing to lower overall costs?
Next steps
On 5 June 2025 we will held an online forum on the discussion paper. You can find a copy of the slides on our website. We will be uploading a summary of the Q&A session as well.