Thursday, 30 May 2024

Energy policy

Tim READ (Brunswick) (17:29): (697) My adjournment is for the Minister for Consumer Affairs, and the action I seek is that the government introduces minimum energy efficiency standards for rental properties to provide greater ongoing cost-of-living relief for renters in the form of lower energy bills. Up until this year the Victorian government was handing out annual $250 power saving bonuses directly to households. This year the federal government announced a similar $300 payment. While no-one is complaining about governments providing direct cost-of-living relief at the moment, I cannot help but wonder whether or not there is a far better way to help households than giving money to households to pass straight on to their energy companies. Effectively, subsidising energy companies provides no long-term environmental benefits, and it does not provide any substantial ongoing reductions in household energy bills to meaningfully assist with the rising cost of living. These policies do nothing to address the fact that next year people’s energy bills will still be high, if not higher, while their houses will still be freezing in winter and boiling in summer.

Home energy experts such as the NGO Renew are clear that the best way to cut household energy bills is, first, to draught-seal homes and install window treatments and insulation and, second, to replace inefficient gas and electric appliances with heat pumps to transition a home to all electric with solar panels. The annual energy savings for even doing a few of these things would be many times the small bonuses provided by the government, up to thousands of dollars in savings to Victorians every single year. The government must mandate minimum energy standards for rentals, and these standards need to be enforced in rental properties. A good place to start would be to require all rental ads to provide an energy efficiency rating or the indicative heating and cooling bill costs for listed properties and require them to professionally seal all exposed holes and draughts. Requiring old appliances to be replaced with modern efficient reverse-cycle air conditioning and heat pump hot water should be immediately mandated for all rentals, rather than the current requirement, which allows landlords to install just any old heater, as they currently do. Progressive land tax incentives for landlords who improve the energy efficiency of their rentals as they electrify, insulate and install solar should be considered along with the new minimum energy efficiency standards to help speed the transition.