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In Melbourne’s cold, the Italian cuisine served along Lygon Street in Carlton is a warm comfort.
But while serving food to satisfy the lunchtime rush, Universal Restaurant owner Angelo Mercuri says the price of energy is a growing tension.
“Especially towards the beginning of this year we noticed a big increase in our prices. That made us wake up and realize we needed to take a look at this. So we looked around a bit and tried to get the best deal possible. We’re a busy restaurant, a big place, so we use a lot of energy. We’re open 7 days a week, 11am to 11pm, so we work long hours.”
Mercuri says its customer base of students keeps business going, but has noticed a particular demographic is less active.
“We definitely notice that when the cost of living goes up, it tends to be families who leave first in terms of their customer base. They feel it and they get hit a little bit harder. There’s a little less money in the account to go out at dinner and stuff like that.”
For families across much of the country, the new data confirms a sad reality.
Compared to the previous quarter, wholesale prices increased in nearly every part of the nation’s energy market.
South Australia grew by 78%, New South Wales by 86%, while Tasmania and Victoria both increased by 97 and 99% respectively.
Only Queensland’s price fell – by 21% – an anomaly blamed on warmer weather and fewer power generator outages.
This is Australian energy regulator Jarrod Ball.
“It’s really about what’s happening in the market and the challenging conditions we’re seeing, particularly on the supply side. We’ve seen disruptions in networks, even aging coal plants that have had unexpected outages. We’ve also seen right now of the year, as you would expect, lower solar and wind generation. And then what happens is you have to have higher priced generation that comes in to fill that gap – from coal, from gas-fired generation and also from the. energy hydroelectric.
The Australian Energy Market Operator also released a report, showing record demand for the June quarter.
The government says prices are still lower than when the Coalition left office, adding in a statement that the quicker renewables come into the system “the better it will be for energy bills and energy reliability”.
But the opposition has criticized the government’s energy policy, with Liberal leader Peter Dutton instead pushing his nuclear vision.
“Our analysis is that we can get nuclear into the system, 2035 to 2037 at the first two sites, and then continue to roll it out from there. So, just to be clear, when people talk about the phase-in period of nuclear electric power , then you need to ask the government what the phase-in period is for your baseload energy. Our thesis is that if 90% of baseload energy, predominantly coal, goes out of the system over the next decade? so what the does it replace?”
Kylie Walker, of the Academy of Technology Sciences and Engineering, says the small-scale nuclear reactors proposed by the Coalition are unlikely to be built within 20 years.
“If Australia wants to achieve its net zero emissions targets by 2050, the only way to do it is to deploy existing, mature, renewable technologies and do it as quickly as possible. We already have a regulatory framework, we already have a timeline for the implementation and development of that capability. We have already demonstrated that it is feasible for Australia. And Australia is also very warm and receptive to that technology, for example.
The Coalition’s policy has yet to be assessed.