CEG is one of the leading advisors on competition and regulatory issues across the energy sector. Our particular areas of expertise include market definition, cost modeling, competition assessments, analysis of alleged anti-competitive pricing, access arrangements, regulatory design and overall regulatory reform.

Representative cases on which CEG economists have recently advised include: 

• Advice on the potential acquisition of British Energy for one of the world's leading electricity utilities
• Advice in relation to Areva/Urenco joint venture 
• Benchmarking of efficient costs for energy businesses for various clients 
• Expert advice to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, including modelling of the economic impacts of proposed mergers between generators in the Australian National Energy Market (NEM)
• Estimation of appropriate retail margin (including the cost of hedging) for various clients 
• Expert statement for Envestra on the economic reasonableness of alleged related party contracts for outsourcing of the management of gas distribution assets   
• Advice to NEMMCO (an independent system operator) on the efficient recovery of costs incurred
• Advice to several on efficient tariff design in electricity distribution, including analysis of time of use, critical peak, interruptible load and other tariff options
• Expert advice on the appropriate cost of capital for various regulated energy businesses
• Advice to Gilbert and Tobin on the appropriate economic interpretation of a legal requirement for 'fair sharing' of efficiency gains
• Development of regulatory cost models for energy businesses for various clients
• Forecasts of labour and material (transformers, copper cable, switch gear etc) prices for electricity transport businesses, commissioned by five Australian distribution and transmission businesses. 
• Expert advice National Competition Council on whether pricing by a dominant gas transmission pipeline owner constituted the exploitation of market power and, consequently, whether regulation should be imposed
• Expert advice to owners and regulators on the appropriate valuation of existing gas pipelines newly subject to regulation
• Advice to TransGrid on the design of electricity markets, the role of unregulated "merchant" transmission, and the implications for efficient investment in generation and transmission assets
• Submission to the US energy regulator (FERC) on market design, prepared for TransGrid
• Advice to the Macau regulator (GDSE) on efficient tariff reform for the vertically integrated generation and network provider in Macau.  This involved estimating the LRMC on maximum demand and translating this into efficient tariff designs given relevant constraints (including metering constraints)
• Development of a price index to reflect movements in the unit costs of inputs for electricity transmission, for TransGrid
• Expert report for the Essential Services Commission of South Australia on the appropriate mechanism to provide ETSA Utilities with an incentive to achieve cost reductions in operating and capital expenditure.

CEG's Energy Practice Brochure is available here.