The Coalition for Community Energy submission to the Energy Security Board (ESB)– Post 2025 Market Design highlights that community energy is largely missing from considerations.
Click here to view C4CE’s submission.
The Energy Security Board is grappling with National Energy Markey issues emerging at the centralised and individual customer level but the Post 20225 Market Design paper spends little time considering benefits that can only be unlocked at the community level. Collective benefits have been the main driver for community energy groups to come together and organise local energy solutions and the innovative activities of the community energy sector deserve greater scrutiny.
This short response is not intended as a full analysis of the Australian community energy sector. Instead we provide some examples and encourage the ESB, the market bodies and energy corporates to think more deeply about the role of locally scaled energy solutions and the participation of the communities who interact with energy at this scale.
The NEM design is obligated to act in the long term interests of consumers. The community energy sector has been showing, for over a decade, that the NEM doesn’t yet unlock many of the long term benefits that communities want. Community energy groups have been at the forefront of driving:
- a faster transition to a zero carbon electricity system
- local ownership and control of energy assets
- energy efficiency, working with all consumers to improve energy costs and usage
- zero carbon community planning – empowering consumers to participate
- local job creation, regional investment and allowing communities to benefit from their own resources