Interview with Craig Reucassel, ABC Sydney

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Well, last week's group assignment was to reduce our energy bills. And while many of you found you could save heaps with the same energy company, others were left confused a little bit by it. Chris Bowen is the Federal Energy Minister and he joins us now. Morning, Chris.

CHRIS BOWEN: Good morning, Craig.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: So, just an interesting question we came up with last week when we were doing this, why are energy companies allowed to keep us on higher plans, sometimes even higher than the government kind of default safety net price, when they're offering these cheaper ones as well?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, and congratulations to you for what you're doing on letting people know their rights and options here. And there's more that we can do and say about that. So, look, basically, I think the first point is the default market offer, which is the reference price, which is the one that gets all the attention each year when it's released. Now, that is not a - that is not a cap. What it is, is a reference price so that consumers know if one company is saying, for example," oh, we're 10 per cent cheaper," or someone else says "we're 15 per cent cheaper," that we're comparing apples with apples. In the old days, before the DMO, basically, companies could say that and they could be comparing themselves to anybody else or anything else.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: So, could be comparing to an old plan they had three years ago. We're 20 per cent cheaper now.

CHRIS BOWEN: Exactly. And it didn't really mean anything. So, the DMO is the reference. So, if you see a company saying, well, we're 10 per cent cheaper, it means they have to be comparing themselves to the default market offer. And companies can charge more than the default market offer, but they are legally obliged to show the comparison and how they compare.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: It's funny because I hadn't realised they could charge more. That was a bit of a breakthrough last week. And I don't often see that in their ads - "we're charging 20 per cent more than the market offer."

CHRIS BOWEN: The ones who charge less, they spruik it, but the other ones don't. And look, about 20 per cent of people are paying more than the default market offer. And my advice to you and your listeners is the Energy Made Easy website, which Australian Energy Regulator operates. So, that's very independent arm’s length from any company, independent government regulator. That's worth a good look.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Yeah, we gave that advice last week. Some people found some good deals on there, although it doesn't always operate beautifully, but it's doing a bit better. Let's, let's look at --

CHRIS BOWEN: And the other thing is - the other thing is Craig, just before you move on, in the Budget, we did introduce a range of reforms as well, which state and territory energy ministers endorsed last week unanimously to make this a lot easier. One click switch, so that you can just change energy providers a lot more easily. Also, to stop companies automatically moving your tariff without talking to you when you have a smart metre, ensuring that if you sign up for a better deal, it stays for the duration. Things that I think a lot of consumers and people would have assumed was the law all the way along has not been the law, so we're fixing that. It'll take us a little bit of time to get those reforms through the process. We've got to make real changes, et cetera, et cetera. But those – we had money in the last Budget to do that, and now the State and Territory Energy Ministers have endorsed that approach and it's just going through the regulatory processes.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Ok, well, let's move a bit to looking to the future now, looking forward. Energy ministers all met recently and one of the things that's been talked about was electric vehicles being used as kind of batteries to run the grid. If a fifth of Aussies had EVs that could connect to the grid, that would be the same, same power as the Snowy Hydro 2.0. Is this a pipe dream or something we're actually going to be doing in the near future? Like, if somebody's buying an EV now, should they be saying, "oh, I better check whether or not it can feed back into the grid and I can run my home off it?"

CHRIS BOWEN: It's certainly not a pipe trend, it's certainly going to happen, but it is complicated. So, yes, again, as you said, this is - a lot of people say, ask me when I'm out about, you know, if every car was electric, the grid wouldn't cope. And I say, well, look, there's things we need to do to manage that. But also, if every car was electric and we had what we call bidirectional charging, or vehicle to home charging or vehicle to grid charging, that would be a massive boost to consumers and to the energy grid, because our electric vehicles become batteries on wheels. And for the vast majority of people, the battery in your electric vehicle, when you get one, is going to be much more powerful than the battery in your home. It's going to store a lot more energy than the batteries we put in our homes. But at the moment, apart from a few pilots, you can't call on that energy.

So, the ideal is, you know, this is called consumer energy resources, putting consumers in charge of energy in a much more holistic way, rather than just taking energy off the electricity companies when they decide we want it or, you know, when they're deciding what they want to charge for it. So, putting the consumer in charge, becoming, if you like, a prosumer, a producer and a consumer, producing our own energy and consuming, and you being in charge of what you do when.
So, to take, to take that example, you could, if you have the ability to charge your car off your solar panels during the day, you know, get it up to 100, and then at night, when your solar panels aren't working anymore, reverse charge your house and pull the energy back out of your car if you don't need it the next day, if you're not going for a long drive the next day and not call on the energy grid and not need to pay the price of electricity in the evening.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: And I think we're all, we're all excited about that idea. Obviously, the other way you can do that is just with a normal battery. The energy market operator recently put out their latest transition plan. It said that without effective coordination of consumer batteries, so household batteries, $4.1 billion of additional grid scale investment would be needed. So, if you don't get it right, putting batteries on households and getting them all together, it's going to cost us $4.1 billion more. I'm surprised then, there's not more effort by government to give incentives to people to put batteries on their households to do this kind of stuff. I mean, New South Wales has just introduced one that, unfortunately, because it's only happened later in the year, has led to less people investing in batteries right now. But why isn't Federal Government getting involved in this? If you can save yourself $4.1 billion and help people by reducing their prices, by getting batteries on their houses, why are you not doing this?

CHRIS BOWEN: Well, we are very much involved in it, Craig. And the other thing that energy ministers agreed with me last week to do was develop a consumer energy resources roadmap, which is about all these things. It's about vehicle-to-grid charging, it's about household batteries, it's about getting consumers more rights to be in charge of when their battery feeds into the grid, what we call a virtual power plant. In the old days, again, a battery was just a battery. When it ran out, you're back on the grid. These days, more and more batteries are virtual power plants. So, you can set up an algorithm to say, "I want you to feed into the grid, off my battery, when I can make the most money out of it." Or if you're so inclined, you can be manually in charge of that. And look, we are making progress. When we came to office about two years ago, one in three houses had solar panels, but one in 60 had a battery. Now we're at one in 40 have a battery. Now, that's still a long way to go, but progress. And you're right, states and the Commonwealth are working together. The New South Wales Government introduced a battery rebate. Good on them. That's a good thing to do. Different states have different plans. You know, South Australia has been very active in this over the years. Victoria's got different plans in place that have been incentives for batteries. So, it is all happening. Do we need to do it faster? Absolutely.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Absolutely. Well, that's what we always say.

CHRIS BOWEN: Are we catching up fast? Yes, we are. We've done okay. But there's a lot more to do, absolutely.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Yesterday, Barnaby Joyce was speaking to some anti-wind protesters and he suggested that urge people to use the ballot papers like bullets.

[Excerpt]

BARNABY JOYCE: And the bullet you have is that little piece of paper and it goes in that magazine called the voting box.

[Excerpt ends]

CRAIG REUCASSEL: He was referring - you were one of the people mentioned in this. Do you think he should be sacked for this?

CHRIS BOWEN: Yes. Look, a couple of things, Craig. Firstly, I think it just underlies just how opposed the Coalition is to renewable energy, that they would use such violent imagery and such violent language about renewable energy. I think that's just a reminder, if we needed one, that they're not on board for this renewable energy transformation. Secondly, in an era of high polarisation, I'm up for a robust political debate. I can, if I say so myself, do it as well as the next guy. But there is absolutely no place in that robust political debate for violent imagery. We've seen political violence overseas. Things are increasingly fraught here. It was an entirely inappropriate, unnecessary, ill-advised use of language. And it's not his first offence when it comes to embarrassing the body politic. Barnaby Joyce is a big part of the problem when it comes to disinformation in Australia, lies being told about renewable energy, and he's just taken it to the next level with this violent imagery.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Well, I tell you what, I will eat my Akubra if he gets sacked for that, but we'll find out what happens. Good on you. Thanks for speaking to us.

CHRIS BOWEN: [indistinct] right, but nevertheless. Good on you.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Chris Bowen, the Federal Energy Minister there. Thank you for chatting to us.