High energy prices make it ‘almost impossible’ for Australian industry to compete - news24.com.au

Australian industry is reporting that high electricity prices are making it uncompetitive internationally. The article cites unnamed industry sources saying energy costs now present a barrier to manufacturing viability, though it does not specify which sectors are most affected or provide current price levels for comparison.

Where this fits

This is a cost story at its core: the transition to renewables has raised wholesale and retail electricity prices for large industrial users, narrowing margins on exports and deterring investment in energy-intensive production. Firm dispatchable power, coal, gas, or nuclear, would stabilise prices and lower the long-term cost floor for industry. Without it, Australia's energy transition is shifting competitive advantage to countries with cheaper, more reliable grid access. This is also a preparedness story: high energy costs force manufacturers to relocate to jurisdictions with better grid foundations, hollowing out domestic industrial capacity and the technical expertise and supply chains that underpin economic resilience.

What it means

When energy becomes the binding constraint on industrial output, the economy loses leverage. Manufacturers relocate or scale down; capital flows to lower-cost regions; skills and supply chains fragment. Australia's energy policy has prioritised speed to decarbonisation over cost and reliability for large users, betting that technology and scale would solve the gap. That bet has not yet paid off. High prices are not temporary; they reflect the cost of building an electricity system with significant firming, storage and transmission overhead on top of renewable generation. Until that cost pressure is addressed through firm capacity and grid coordination, Australian industry will continue facing headwinds that no technology roadmap alone can solve.