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) necessary for the energy transition.
The review will examine how markets and regulatory frameworks can provide the products and services that best match consumer preferences, now and into the future. This also forms an important component of the overall CER work plan.
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 will involve making use of existing AEMC forums plus establishing new 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 consultation paper to seek stakeholder feedback.
We published a consultation paper on 7 November 2024 to seek stakeholder feedback as we progress the Review. The purpose of this consultation paper is to:
- detail our intended approach for the review
- describe our outlook on what the future energy system could look like
- seek stakeholder feedback on what we have detailed and described
We held a public forum on the consultation paper on 27 November 2024, where stakeholders heard directly from the project team and asked questions about the review.
We have published a summary of the Q&A session and the slide pack from the public forum on this website.
Next steps
Stakeholder submissions to the consultation paper closed on 12 December 2024 and are published on this website. Stakeholder feedback is an important input in informing the review directions paper, which will be published in April 2025. The directions paper will build on the consultation paper by:
- considering different types of potential future offerings
- identifying the barriers to implementing these
- developing and assessing potential regulatory solutions to address the barriers and seize the opportunities the future presents.