Ten regional Victorian towns have been told their gas supply will be shut off next year because the gas company, Solstice Energy, says it’s too expensive to deliver. Around 1,145 households in places like Marong, Swan Hill and Orbost now have to choose between shifting to bottled LPG or attempting a rapid switch to electric appliances — with limited support. Environment Victoria has been working on the ground with affected residents and is hearing widespread anger, confusion and anxiety about a transition that’s been thrust upon regional communities. The situation stands in stark contrast to Esperance in WA, where a well-funded, hands-on, customer-centred approach helped households move off gas smoothly and fairly. Kat Lucas Healey, the senior climate and energy advisor at Environment Victoria, explains why Victoria’s process risks locking vulnerable residents into higher-cost energy options and missing the chance to help people electrify.

Australia could soon be throwing away huge amounts of renewable energy simply because there’s nowhere for it to go. It’s partly why the Federal government has announced its Solar Sharer scheme – a way for households to mop up free, excess electricity for 3 hours in the middle of the day. But is Australia in danger of building a high-renewables grid that leans too heavily on households to solve structural problems? Long-time consumer energy advocate and Senior Advisor with the Justice and Equity Centre, Craig Memery, argues large industrial loads, not households, could be doing more of the heavy lifting on demand flexibility. He warns that renters, shift workers and anyone who can’t move their energy use to the middle of the day could end up subsidising those who can. And he champions energy efficiency as the overlooked “no-brainer” that cuts bills, emissions and peak demand for everyone.

Australia is on the cusp of building more renewable infrastructure in the next decade than in the previous three combined, but the way we build it could make or break regional communities. One of the biggest challenges isn’t turbines or a transmission towers, it’s housing: where will thousands of construction workers live in towns already in a housing crisis. A new report from RE-Alliance argues worker accommodation doesn’t have to be a burden — it can become an important community benefit that a project leaves behind. From refurbishing disused aged-care homes in Wellington, to turning workforce villages into future suburbs in Rockhampton and Gracemere, to councils like Uralla planning for housing long before the workers arrive, there’s a shift happening in how some developers think about construction. RE-Alliance’s national director, Andrew Bray, discusses how the energy transition can bring a once-in-a-generation opportunity.

Parents for Climate CEO Nic Seton unpacks the next chapter in the group’s fight against misleading climate claims. After securing a major settlement against Energy Australia earlier this year — which led to an apology to 400,000 customers and the withdrawal of the company’s Go Neutral product — the Parents have turned their sights to the claims made by other energy retailers, and the government sanctioned Climate Active scheme that endorsed it. Their new report reveals that one in three major retailers are making potentially misleading claims — and they name who they are. Nic explains why the government-backed standard isn’t fit for purpose, and how it’s enabling energy retailers to market products that look green but don’t stack up.

This week’s hearings of the Senate inquiry on information integrity on climate and energy revealed how deeply divided the national conversation about renewables has become. Even as Australia accelerates the rollout of new transmission lines, solar farms and wind projects, many regional communities feel that change is happening to them, not with them. Professor Sara Bice from the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University has spent years studying how governments, industry and communities can collaborate to deliver large-scale infrastructure in ways that are fair, transparent and socially sustainable. Her research shows that while most Australians support the energy transition, they want it to be fair and just — and that the number one driver of public acceptance for new infrastructure isn’t technology or money, but confidence in the regulation that governs it.

Tens of thousands of First Nations households across northern Australia are living with the constant threat of power cuts — some being disconnected from electricity nearly every week. Lauren Mellor from Original Power and Dr Tom Longden from Western Sydney University discuss their new report, The Right to Power – Keeping First Nations Communities on Prepayment Connected, which exposes the staggering human and systemic toll of prepaid electricity systems. They reveal how prepayment — a system often imposed without consent and designed to shift financial risk from retailers to consumers — is leaving families in the dark, often during extreme heat. They discuss the failures of retailers to protect vulnerable customers, the ‘racialised’ nature of prepayment rollouts, and the reforms needed to keep communities connected. From automatic hardship concessions to heatwave disconnection bans and community solar programs, they argue it’s time to end a two-tiered energy system that no other Australians would tolerate.

Australia’s clean energy transition is colliding with a surge of misinformation — from viral claims about whale deaths caused by off-shore wind farms to industry-backed ‘community’ campaigns designed to sow doubt about renewables. Disinformation is now pervasive and coordinated. It damages democratic debate and urgent climate action, and creates confusion and erodes support for climate change action. A Senate committee inquiry is currently looking at how these narratives spread and who’s behind them. It’s received hundreds of submissions and will hear from researchers, activists, tech platforms, etc about how misinformation shapes public attitudes and policy. Chair of the committee, Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson outlines what they’ve learnt so far, and what it will take to ensure truth and transparency are protected in Australia’s energy debate.

Australia’s electricity sector is decarbonising — but not fast enough. While the Renewable Energy Target has been doing the heavy lifting to incentivise the rollout of wind and solar, it doesn’t require fossil fuel generators to cut their emissions. For years governments have avoided putting a price on carbon, fearing it would drive up power bills. But new modelling from the Grattan Institute shows those fears are outdated — household energy costs are actually set to fall as more Australians switch from petrol and gas to electric. They argue that by extending the existing Safeguard Mechanism, which is already used to cap the emissions of large industrial polluters and the transport sector, we could accelerate the clean-energy shift without increasing household electricity bills. Alison Reeve, Program Director for Energy and Climate Change at the Grattan Institute, explains how this approach could deliver both lower bills and lower emissions.

Embedded networks — private electricity systems in apartments and housing communities — could become a cornerstone of Australia’s clean energy future, helping residents generate, store, and share renewable power. But without urgent reform, they risk trapping households in systems that serve profits rather than people, and lock consumers out of the energy transition. Reform is long overdue after a major 2017 review by the Australian Energy Market Commission was shelved. Law Quarter director and principal Connor James explains how embedded network operators currently overcharge tenants and block access to renewables. But citizen-led models like Narara Eco Village on the NSW Central Coast show what’s possible when residents control their own networks — combining solar, batteries, and smart energy management to cut costs and emissions.

The federal government’s Cheaper Home Batteries Program is being hailed as a clean energy win, cutting installation costs and driving more than a thousand new batteries into homes every day. But Reposit Power co-founder and CEO Dean Spaccavento calls it “a colossal wasted opportunity.” He says while the scheme is “excellent in its scope,” weak regulation, vague technical standards, and poor oversight mean only a tiny fraction of those batteries will ever help stabilise the grid. After more than a decade pushing to make household energy “punch at weight” with big utilities, Spaccavento argues Australia risks missing a critical moment to build a truly distributed, consumer-powered energy system.