INDUSTRY OVERVIEW Electricity industry is one of the fastest growing industries in Australia. Any

“When AES undertook primarily domestic contract generation projects where the risk of changes to input and output prices was minimal, a project finance framework was employed.”

rise Australia's efficiency and add to higher GDP growth by sanctioning domestic businesses admittance to inexpensive inputs, leading innovative technologies, and nurturing competition and advancement

This essay will detail the impact of EU liberalisation policy on the UK energy industry and relate this to a previous sample of a group of suppliers. This essay will discuss industry supplier concentration, oligopoly and monopolistic competition, the EU competition commission and potential single markets which are not yet subject to scrutiny by the competition commission.

Australia's power distribution is very effective with very few blackouts and 24 hour assistance in case of emergencies (Metcalfe, 2007). Like any other country, Australia has environmental issues however it is trying to become more environmentally friendly and efficient. Australia is building more infrastructure and becoming more environmentally friendly. China on the other hand does not have effective energy distribution. Blackouts are a common thing in China due to the overwhelming demand for energy (Xinzhang, 2007). Right now China faces the problem that there is not enough transmission capacity to provide additional supplies which results in poor distribution. Coal is the main resource used for energy supply in China by a staggering 63.4% compared to 6.9% hydroelectricity (China Today, 2005). Coal use in Australia is significantly less than this with only 42% of its energy source being coal (Metcalfe, 2007). China has overwhelming carbon dioxide emissions, so overwhelming that China is accountable for 15% of the world's emissions (World Fact book, 2007). This has very negative social costs with acid rain being a frequent problem for China. 5% of China's GDP is spent on trying to fix the social costs of pollution (China Today, 2007). Not only is this not statically efficient, but it is not dynamically efficient either. Therefore, even though both countries have environmental issues, Australia is able to provide a better power supply

The low price elasticity of demand for household energy given the lack of easy alternatives means that consumers will continue to purchase it even when prices rise drastically as we can see from extract A they did over the three year period. Furthermore the complex pricing structures in the energy market make it difficult for consumers to exercise any consumer sovereignty because they lack the information or indeed don’t know how to interpret it, to make a decision which is in their best interest.

Australia has also experienced a rising terms of trade to 130.0 in late 2011 due to the commodities boom as a result of the industrialization of the BRICs, whereby Australia has experienced high export and national income, but has resulted in less competitiveness in other sectors due to the high AUD, causing the ‘Dutch disease’ whereby non-commodity sectors lose competitiveness. Similarly is can be seen in its narrow export base whereby in 2012-13 one third of export revenue came from coal and iron ore ($96 billion from 300 billion), furthermore 57% of Australian export revenue is made up of mineral and energy exports, whereby Australian growth has been largely fuelled by commodity exports and mining boom.

In 2007, Canada’s industries saved 2.1 billion U.S. dollars of energy costs (2007). All these numbers show Canada’s efforts in general public utilities.

My individual seminar paper is written on EDF Energy. This is one of UK’s largest energy companies and its large producer of low carbon electricity. They generate around one fifth of the UK’s electricity. They supply electricity and gas to around 5.5 million residential and business customers, making them the biggest supplier of electricity by volume.

What makes electric utilities (Con Edison) monopolistic and why? Support your answer by referring to AT LEAST 2 FORCES outlined in MICHEAL PORTER’S Five Forces of Analysis

Currently, the energy (electricity generation) sector in Canada is facing a major crisis, which is the fear of running out of world’s natural resources to produce electricity. Even though the Canadian government is promoting renewable resources, it will take a long time to establish a network that is completely dependent on renewable resources. In the meantime, the population of Canada is growing drastically and cities such as Toronto is struggling to meet the rising demand for electricity due to urbanization.

Is coal power the best option for Australia, as current ‘green’ energy options are unable to support our power needs now and into the future.

The Australian economy has continued to grow at a moderate pace and activity is rebalancing away from the resources sector towards non-resource sectors. Even though the available data suggest that GDP continued to grow at a below-trend pace over 2016, employment growth was above average and the unemployment rate fell by around ½ percentage point. In part, employment growth appears to have reflected the relatively strong growth of output in the more labour-intensive sectors of the economy, such as household services. Growth of goods-related production has picked up more recently, but remains modest overall.

The Australian competition and consumer commission commenced an inquiry looking into Telstra’s rural monopoly in September 2016(4). They concluded that giving service providers roaming capabilities off the Telstra network may have an adverse effect on price levels and there was no evidence that there would be a decrease in Telstra’s pricing through more competition. Currently rural and regional customers benefit from the high competition in metropolitan areas because the industry has consistent Australia wide pricing schedules for their consumer services (5).

Energy industry has always been affected by a heavy level of laws and regulations. However, the regulation aspect is slacker than it used to be in the past decade. Take the carbon tax as an example, the repeal of carbon tax in 2014 reduced the cost of energy industry by 4.7% for the 2014-2015 financial year (Allday, 2016). The current Australian energy market is mainly ruled by the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) and the National Electricity Law and National Gas Law. What auditors must notice is, changes in law and regulation is somehow political and unpredictable, which may lead to auditing

The industry is marked by Low revenue volatility and medium regulation level. Although industry globalisation is a critical stage and poses a major threat. However over the last five year the industry has boomed due to increase in consumer expenditure , after the recovery of Australian economy in 2010 the industry has started to positive upturn. The industry is expected to grow at annualized 3.3% to a total of $771.3 million.