When developing the recommendations in the 2021 Plan, Infrastructure Australia's approach was to:
• prioritise benefits to service users and community sustainability
• avoid duplicating existing and ongoing reform work programs, to avoid uncertainty
• complement and build on existing energy transition work programs being undertaken by Australian Government and state and territory energy departments, the ESB, the AEMC, AEMO and the AER.
The 2021 Plan is a non-build plan of policy reforms that aims to optimise infrastructure for service users and community sustainability. We looked at the sector through the eyes of energy users, considering key issues that are affecting them.
With the growing electrification of transport, industry and household energy, the importance of electricity policy to customers is increasing, so the 2021 Plan has a strong focus on the electricity supply chain, along with gas and emerging technologies.
Moreover, energy infrastructure is built to serve customer demands. Consumer behaviour and technology directly influence the infrastructure that needs to be built, so enabling more efficient energy consumption will have significant benefits for the whole energy infrastructure sector, not just for users. Electrification of the economy is part of the unprecedented transformation of this sector. Consequently, electricity will become the predominant energy source in the future. Electrification will enable affordable, reliable and clean energy to power almost every aspect of how Australians live and work.
For broader measures and recommendations around sustainability, see the Sustainability and resilience chapter. For more recommendations to enable the electrification of transport services, see the Transport chapter.