The Australian Financial Review is pleased to announce our inaugural National Energy Summit, designed to find a consensus on the way out of Australia's gathering energy crisis.

While becoming one of the world's biggest energy exporters, a decade of political division has undermined Australia's competitive advantage in cheap power generated from fossil fuels. A national carbon pricing scheme was dismantled before it could become fully operational. Yet renewed increases in electricity and gas costs threaten energy-intensive processing industries.   

The national electricity market has struggled to cope with the mandated expansion of solar, wind and other renewable energy sources, threatening the stability of the grid and blackouts such as South Australia's state-wide system failure. Technological disruption could destabilise the grid further or help it to accommodate more dispersed power sources.  

At The Australian Financial Review Business Summit in March, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declared a national energy crisis, prompted by looming shortages of gas amid the expansion of LNG exports and state government environmental restrictions on gas development.

As chief scientist Alan Finkel reports on the security of the National Energy Market, business is calling on the political system to agree on a stable policy framework to support the private investment required to transition to a carbon-constrained world and secure national prosperity.

The two-day Financial Review Energy Summit will seek to shape a broad consensus among federal and state governments and opposition parties, business energy users and suppliers, regulators and other stakeholders. 

Book your tickets for the October 9-10 event now.