JoNova
https://joannenova.com.au/2025/10/energy-prices-are-now-the-biggest-single-concern-of-business-in-australia/It was always going to happen, as long as the Minister for Weather was determined to control Pacific Decadal Oscillations with windmills. Everyone would be happy-happy until the bill arrived.
In a survey of 500 Australian companies, the rapid rise of energy costs are now the single biggest concern. Any given business was three times as likely to worry about the price of energy rather than about Trump’s tariffs.
Yet in the election campaign, mere months ago, media coverage of US tariffs was wall-to-wall.
Likewise, the billion-dollar-ABC spends 100 times as long lecturing us on foreign wars as it does discussing the things Australians need, like lights, heat, air conditioning and jobs. The national conversation about electricity grids is nothing more than renewable advertising slogans and fairy wish spells. Everyone can subsidize everyone else to buy solar panels and batteries, and we’ll all have free electricity, yeah?
Is there a productivity crisis in Australia. Shh!
A survey of more than 500 Australian companies has found energy costs have become the top business challenge
Matthew Cranston, The Australian
Businesses now rank the cost of energy as the chief concern for their future, rating it almost three times more worrying than US tariff and trade disruptions, according to new analysis.
Several corporate leaders, including those in the manufacturing sector, say the cost of energy is rising so fast that it’s now risking their competitiveness with importers…
BHP’s Mr Henry told a shareholder forum last month: “The reality is … Australia has electricity costs that are two to three times higher than countries that we are competing with and 50 to 100 per cent higher than the US.”
The chief executive of data centre owner NEXTDC, Craig Scroggie, said higher energy costs were crimping Australia’s competitiveness. “No one is happy with higher energy costs, especially when the government says they are going to be low.
We’re reached the point where we are thousands of miles away from most factories and smelters, but we still can’t make anything cheaper for ourselves than they can. Energy costs are rising so fast in Australia, it’s less expensive to dig up rocks, put them on ships and send them 6,000 kilometers to China, to smelt the steel with our own coal, and then ship the widgets right back to us. And if it’s made with slave labor and plenty of pollution, that’s OK.
