On 25 July 2024, the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) self-initiated a review to address the important role that electricity pricing, products and services will play in supporting the diverse needs of customers, including delivering the consumer energy resources (CER) necessary for the energy transition. The review, Electricity pricing for a consumer-driven future, will examine how markets and regulatory frameworks can provide the products and services that best match consumer preferences now, and into the future.
Draft Terms of Reference
The AEMC released a draft terms of reference alongside the review’s announcement. The AER made a submission on these draft terms of reference on 27 August 2024.
Consultation paper
On 7 November 2024, the AEMC published a consultation paper for its self-initiated Pricing Review. The consultation paper’s purpose was to seek stakeholder feedback on the AEMC’s intended approach for the Pricing Review and to describe its outlook on what the future energy system could look like.
On 20 December 2024, the AER made a submission to the Consultation paper.
Discussion paper
On 3 June 2025, the AEMC published a discussion paper for its Pricing Review. The paper sought to test and validate with stakeholders what the AEMC have heard about the problems identified, why they are occurring, and whether they will persist in the future in the absence of reform.
The AER lodged a submission on 14 July 2025 which:
- shares implementation insights from the AER’s role in tariff review
- explores how pricing interacts with other elements
- highlights the need for better alignment to support demand-side flexibility
- discusses challenges in how network price signals are translated by retailers into customer offers
- offers potential opportunities for future analysis and exploration. Pricing reform should seek to improve both individual responsiveness and support a broader shift toward orchestrated flexibility and integrated distribution system operation. This can also build on other reforms including in relation to CER data availability, metering, and consumer protections.
Draft report
On 11 December 2025, the AEMC published a draft report for its Pricing Review. The report set out a vision for a dynamic energy services market that delivers value, meets the preferences of different consumers, and offers choice of energy service provider, while ensuring lowest overall costs and building trust through targeted protections. The report made 6 recommendations for reforms to harness competition to improve outcomes for all consumers, make it easier for consumers to compare offers that suit them, and reward consumers for activities that are valuable in achieving a lowest-cost system and target a more equitable allocation of shared costs.
The AER lodged a submission on 13 February 2026 which:
- welcomes the AEMC’s consumer-centric vision for the future of electricity pricing and generally agrees with the objectives and intended outcomes set out by the AEMC in its draft report
- supports recommendations for the AEMC to periodically review whether the regulatory framework supports good consumer outcomes and for additional funding to enhance the capabilities of the Energy Made Easy website (Recommendations 3 and 4)
- suggests proposed reforms to the retail market be reconsidered once the impacts of recent retail market changes, such as to the Default Market Offer, become clearer (Recommendations 1 and 2)
- notes the impacts of recommendations that could result in higher fixed network charges and stresses the need for more detailed consideration of the signals and incentives such a change may send into the future (Recommendations 5 and 6)
- emphasises the need to consider network tariff reform in the context of the broader network regulation framework and the future energy market, including the risk of driving up costs for customers without consumer energy resources if customers with these resources exit the grid
- suggests the AEMC’s forthcoming Electricity Network Regulation Review is an opportunity to design a holistic solution by considering the interactions between network tariffs, access frameworks, forms of control, incentive schemes, flexibility, non-network options and demand forecasting assumptions.
The AER will continue to consider how we can support more efficient and equitable network tariffs within the current framework.