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  • The drivers of energy-related financial hardship in Australia – understanding the role of income, consumption and housing

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    Nelson167387.pdf (427.8Kb)
    Author(s)
    Nelson, T
    McCracken-Hewson, E
    Sundstrom, G
    Hawthorne, M
    Griffith University Author(s)
    Nelson, Tim A.
    Year published
    2019
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    Abstract
    Saunders and Bedford (2017) demonstrated that income levels are inadequate for some Australian households to maintain a basic standard of living. Analysing utility bills can extend this consideration of income adequacy issues given the essential nature of services such as electricity, telephony and water. This article builds on the work presented by Simshauser and Nelson (2014) about key demographic cohorts in Australia that have a high incidence of energy-related financial hardship. Our analysis indicates that energy related financial hardship is likely to be related to a combination of the following: family formation ...
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    Saunders and Bedford (2017) demonstrated that income levels are inadequate for some Australian households to maintain a basic standard of living. Analysing utility bills can extend this consideration of income adequacy issues given the essential nature of services such as electricity, telephony and water. This article builds on the work presented by Simshauser and Nelson (2014) about key demographic cohorts in Australia that have a high incidence of energy-related financial hardship. Our analysis indicates that energy related financial hardship is likely to be related to a combination of the following: family formation demographics; low-income (often reliant upon government income support); higher household size; and higher than average consumption. Our policy recommendations are relatively straightforward: development of tools to allow easier ‘shopping around’ by energy customers; cessation of credit-checking by energy retailers as a means of restricting access to energy offers; reform of state-based concessions frameworks; a lifting of income support for some key cohorts (e.g. unemployed); improvements to energy-efficiency standards; and amendments to tenancy laws to overcome potential principal-agent issues associated with uptake of new energy products and services such as embedded solar PV and battery storage.
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    Journal Title
    Energy Policy
    Volume
    124
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2018.10.003
    Copyright Statement
    © 2019 Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited.
    Subject
    Electrical energy generation (incl. renewables, excl. photovoltaics)
    Heterodox economics
    Political economy and social change
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/383307
    Collection
    • Journal articles

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