Across the world we are witnessing transformations in energy markets. Countries are increasingly being forced to address challenges around the reliability, affordability and sustainability of energy supply. In Australia, we are facing significant price rises over recent years putting financial pressure on households and businesses. We know consumers face a range of challenges when engaging in the energy market and making choices about the energy they consume.
This session will explore some of these challenges and how we might overcome them. It will showcase hot off the press Australian and international research.
Facilitator: Dr Ross Lambie
Elisabeth Costa
Elisabeth is the Director of Consumers, Economic Growth and Energy at the Behavioural Insights Team. She leads a broad portfolio of projects covering economic growth, productivity, consumer markets financial behaviour, energy, sustainability and housing. Elisabeth was the lead author of BIT’s report ‘Applying behavioural insights to regulated markets’ and has recently led the team’s work with Ofgem, the UK energy regulator, running a series of trials to increase consumer engagement and switching across the energy market.
Tadahiro Ikemoto
Tadahiro is a Deputy Director at Japan’s Ministry of the Environment and Cabinet Office. He holds a degree of Doctor of Science from the University of Tokyo and MPH and MPA degrees from Harvard University. After study at Harvard University, in April 2017, he launched Japan’s first national behavioural insights team named Behavioral Sciences Team (BEST) under the Ministry of the Environment with several projects in policy areas including environment, energy, health, and education to create a Japanese model of behaviour change.
Rick Larrick
Rick Larrick is the Hanes Corporation Foundation Professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Larrick’s research interests include individual, group, and organizational decision making. Specific areas of research examine environmental decision making, the wisdom of crowds, advice taking, goal setting, and debiasing. Larrick received his Ph. D.
Sarah Proudfoot
Sarah Proudfoot has been working at the Australian Energy Regulator since 2011. Sarah joined the AER from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, where she had managed the information and outreach program for five years. When she started at the AER, Sarah worked on the development of the AER’s guidelines on retail pricing information and the retail exempt selling framework, ahead of the commencement of the National Energy Retail Law in 2012.