Alex Wonhas (Director of Energy Flagship at CSIRO) has an article in today’s issue of The Conversation on options for Australia’s energy future.  Apart from the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions in order to avoid runaway climate change, high and increasing electricity prices should be a major driver for changing the way we generate and distribute energy.

As Wonhas points out:

Over the past five years electricity prices have risen more than 60%. This is due to a combination of factors, but upgrades of electricity networks are the main driver for the increases. At times, we as consumers chose to use this expensive infrastructure in an inefficient way. Network infrastructure worth $11 billion across the National Electricity Market is only used for an estimated 100 hours per year of peak demand.

Australia needs a pricing system for electricity that signals the true network costs to households and businesses. We also need to remove barriers to deploying solutions that can enhance energy productivity and reduce costs.

Many solutions already exist that could make our electricity system more efficient.

The full article is well worth reading.