Victorians could buy their electricity direct from the state government as it considers ways to expand the new-look State Electricity Commission beyond what was promised during the election campaign.
If the extension went ahead, it would make the SEC the first public retailer of power to Victorian homes and businesses in more than two decades.
Director of Victoria University’s energy policy centre Bruce Mountain said the new SEC would have to be involved in retail to ensure lower prices. “One of the big promises was lower prices for customers and simply selling your production on the wholesale market is no guarantee customers will get the gains of that.”to revive an SEC that would generate 4.5 gigawatts of renewable electricity, about one third of the state’s current capacity.
But he reiterated that some things should not be owned by the private sector, saying “they might be delivered by the private sector, but they should not be owned by the private sector”.Office in the Latrobe Valley, which has borne the brunt of job losses at coal-fired power stations. Senior government insiders said decisions about using private services or suppliers were made on a case-by-case basis, but highlighted recent government intervention in healthcare contracts in women’s prisons and the promise to review the procurement for currently out-sourced non-emergency patient transport services.
This, he suggested, reflected a growing public sense that privatisation, outsourcing and other market solutions hadn’t always delivered good outcomes, particularly during crises such as the pandemic.
The new SEC would very likely be run as a state-owned corporation, with an independent board operating at arm’s length from the government.
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