this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2026
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State becomes first to ban retail energy "loyalty tax," in bid to save customers hundreds of dollars a year (reneweconomy.com.au)
submitted 1 week ago by vividspecter@aussie.zone to c/australia@aussie.zone
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[–] Nath@aussie.zone 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Around 20 years ago, the WA state government introduced a gas reserve. It has been reinforced multiple times since then by premiers on both sides of government. Short version: 15% of offshore gas and 20% onshore is reserved for WA before whoever is extracting it is permitted to sell it outside the state.

I think WA is doing alright, here's an extract from our energy bill (family of four) to compare:

Your average daily usage 15.7778 units Your average daily cost $6.27 per day

[–] vividspecter@aussie.zone 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

A good idea then and will remain so for a while, but I suspect gas will be close to irrelevant for the local electricity market within a decade. Hopefully WA starts pushing hard on the renewable transition as they have been a bit of a laggard historically, but I get the impression they are starting to ramp up.

On your bill example, the per kwh and supply charge would be more comparable, although I get that time of use etc can complicate things.

[–] Nath@aussie.zone 1 points 1 week ago

There's a lot of domestic solar in WA, same as most of Australia, I guess. There isn't a lot of sun at night, though. There are a few places like Albany on the south coast that are almost 100% renewable (wind farms).

We still have some coal in the mix, but I'm not an expert/couldn't tell you how much.

We don't have peak/off-peak prices. That's the rate. I remember being pleasantly surprised because our bill halved coming to Perth from Melbourne.