The Energy Charter, Author at The Energy Charter

November 2023 News Update

In the November 2023 News Update, CEO Council Chair, Guy Chalkley shares share strategic highlights from the annual Energy Charter Disclosures as well as future priorities for collaboration for customers and communities for the year ahead.

We also provide an update to the #BetterTogether Evaluating Transmission Undergrounding initiative with the survey now live to help understand community perspectives on decision-making about new transmission lines.

You can also register for the CEO Forum in December: Charting a Better Energy Future as well as find a list of all other upcoming events.

CEO Council Chair

Resilience Community of Practice – Preparedness, Disruptions and Impact

Compelling narratives to showcase the power of resilience in action

In September, the Resilience Community of Practice explored how forward-thinking organisations:

Proactively prepare for disruptive events
The challenges of around real disruptions and how they can be overcome
The critical role that resilience and preparedness play in mitigating customer impacts.

Speaker Fiona Dunk, Group Manager, Business Resilience for Signatory Jemena unravelled the compelling narratives to showcase the power of resilience in action.

As a starting point, Fiona pointed to the preparedness as the foundation of proactive Resilience noting that,

“In the face of uncertainty, preparedness is the compass that guides us through the storm.”

She highlighted that preparing well is the ability to recognise precedence, have strong situational awareness and foresight,

“We can’t rely on the playbook from last year – we need to prepare for this year.”

Preparedness is also about never loosing site of the opportunity to capture and implement lessons learnt. Every disruptive event offers an opportunity to learn and improve.

Regardless of the type of disruption, Fiona encourages a focus on community-centred resilience to achieve better outcomes for those impacted.

In simple terms, this means:

Providing empathetic and proactive customer service during disruptions to maintain trust
Rallying communities to support each other to minimise hardship during disruptions
Prioritise the needs of vulnerable customers during disruptions through outreach and assistance.

Part of this respecting and empowering your connections,

“Communities have vast resources and capacity to empower their people and respond to emergencies when you enable collective action. Provide the space and respect local partners.”

Key takeaways

Preparedness is the foundation
Disruptions are inevitable
Community-centric focus matters
Learn lessons for the future
We are always, #BetterTogether.

Participant reflections

Following the presentation participants reflected on the below question and encouraged others to do the same with colleagues:

Where are you getting your foresight for this year’s risks and what are you putting in place to share and prepare?
Supporting responder mental health through disaster is essential, how are you preparing to manage fatigue in teams, especially considering cumulative and compounding events are becoming more frequent?
Coming into a potentially very difficult year weather-wise, how are you working with your Board and Leadership to drive Resilience outcomes now. What do you have in place to track customer and community outcomes?
What do your simulations/preparedness events look like and how can you bring in other parties to ensure preparedness at a collaborative level?
In the context of resilience, what do you do in practice to create psychologically safe spaces for teams and communities?
How do you hear from communities on what they need from you? How are you brining these voices into your decision making now and in-disaster?

Session resources

Preparedness, Disruptions and Impacts PowerPoint

Preparedness, Disruptions and Impacts session recording

About our speaker

Fiona Dunk has more than 30 years of experience in Crisis & Emergency Management, Security and Resilience most recently as the Group Manager, Business Resilience for Jemena.

Fiona holds a Masters Degree in Business Technology from the University of New South Wales and has held roles in the Royal Australian Navy, Marine Safety Management, Port Emergency & Security Management, Crisis/Emergency management Consultancy and Project Management.

About this event

This event is part of the Energy Charter’s Resilience Community of Practice dedicated to helping customers and communities better prepare, respond and recover from disaster events.

Every second month, the Energy Charter host a Community of Practice, including expert-led discussions building on the topics covered in the Energy Charter’s Disaster Response Playbook:

Communication and Education – where do communities get information, how is it delivered and who needs to know? This includes sharing learnings on successful communication and education campaigns as an essential aspect of disaster preparedness, response and recovery.
Coordination and Collaboration – what are the opportunities to better work together across the energy sector and within the broader eco-system? This includes better practice case studies on successful collaboration.
Planning and Preparedness – what is our role in building community and individual capacity to plan and prepare for a disaster? This includes opportunities to build resilience ownership and literacy within communities, so they can better respond in a disaster.
Learning loops – It’s essential to share back to enable continuous improvement. This includes sharing insights from recent disaster events and building a resilience learning library.

Learn more on the dedicated Resilience Community of Practice page here.

#BT Resilience

Register for the Energy Charter CEO Forum – Charting a Better Energy Future!

Join our panel of Energy Charter CEOs from across the nation on 6 December 2023 for our CEO Forum: Charting a Better Energy Future, hosted by Cath Smith, Chair of the End-User Consultative Group for the release of the Energy Charter Annual Disclosure 2023.

About the CEO Forum

Together we will review and reflect on the collective achievements for customers and communities through the #BetterTogether initiatives in response to our priority areas: cost-of-living crisis and energy transition.

We’ll also dive into the critical role of authentic accountability and transparency in enabling continuous improvement, as well as focus on the future opportunities to continue building towards creating a better energy future for all Australians.

We look forward to your engagement and participation in this CEO Forum to help shape better outcomes for customers and communities today, and into the future, as we transition to a more sustainable, reliable and affordable energy future.

Introducing the host + panellists

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Community of Practice – Stories from the frontline of the cost-of-living crunch

In our October Know Your Customers + Communities – Community of Practice, we heard firsthand from financial counsellors across Australia about how customers are managing the cost-of-living crisis specifically their energy and water bills.

Firsthand insights into the cost-of-living crisis with Financial Counselling Australia (FCA)

Leading the discussion was Fiona Guthrie, the CEO of Financial Counselling Australia (FCA), the national voice for the financial counselling profession in Australia.

To gain insights into cost-of-living crisis across the country, the panelists included:

From NSW: Vanessa Emergy, Financial Counsellor and Team Leader at Wesley Mission NSW, who represents FCA on the Australian Energy Regulator Consumer Consultative Group
From QLD: Rose McGrath, Financial Counsellor at YFS QLD
From Tasmania: Danielle Slade, Financial Counsellor at Anglicare TAS and President of the Financial Counsellors Association Tasmania
From Victoria: Andrea Osborne, Financial Counsellor at Uniting VIC as well as participates in the Utilities Working Group for FCA.

What does a Financial Counsellor do?

Financial counselling is a free service run by not-for-profits, offering information, options and support in regard to debts.

One of the key benefits of a financial counsellor is they can provide information on benefits, concessions and entitlements including “concessions regarding energy, which is particularly important these days because a lot of people don’t know what they’re entitled to.”

A lot of financial counsellors are also trained in counselling and can offer emotional support.

“We provide information so customers can make informed choices and decisions and have ownership of their own situation. We don’t want to be telling them what they have to do, we want to give them the information so they can make decisions for themselves. It’s really important that they have control of their situation.”

To learn more, watch the short video where Andrea Osborne explains the wide range of services a financial counsellor can provide.

What are customers experiencing when it comes to energy and water costs?

Taking the time to listen to what financial counsellors are learning from their casework can offer valuable insight into the financial challenges people are facing. Below, the panel explores what they’re seeing firsthand when it comes to why customers are not able to pay their energy and water bills.

The gap between energy and other life essentials

Danielle Slade, who works for the National Debt Helpline 5 days a week, explains that “the biggest thing we’ve seen is extraordinarily large debts,” where in some cases, people can barely cover their current usage let alone also contribute towards old energy bills.

Danielle continued on to provide insight into the essentials that help create a comfortable life, including:

Rent or housing
Food
Transport
Medications
Telecommunications
Power

“I say power last because [in the eyes of the customer], that’s the only bill this fortnight that I can skip if I just don’t have enough money. If I don’t pay my rent, I get evicted. I have to eat. I can’t walk my children to school if it takes us 2 hours to get there. I can’t not take medication. So, the only thing that’s left that I can skip this fortnight is power. So, a lot of people leave it to that 3 month bill and then we get a debt that’s just so unmanageable.”

The link to housing and water costs

There has also been recent casework where customers are struggling to pay their water bills.

Rose McGrath explained, “For renters, they pay the landlords directly. They don’t have a direct billing relationship with the water company or with the council. So, water arrears are very much tied up with rent arrears and because rents have increased so much, people are really struggling to pay their water and rent. As a result, partly, they are being evicted for non-payment of their water.”

Rose goes on to explain that in some cases, there is such high demand for rental subsidies and rental arrears, it takes up to 2 months for people to receive them where they can be evicted within that time.

“With water, there are no hardship provisions like there is in energy. There is no hardship framework and there’s no concessions for renters.”

What can the energy sector do to help with the cost-of-living crunch?

When it comes to supporting customers with their energy and water bills, the panel provided insight into what’s currently working and what could be improved to help customers regain control of their financial situation.

Continue educating customers on ways to reduce their power bills, where Andrea mentions that once customers are given this information, “12-24 months down the track, we had observed their energy bills and they dropped hundreds [of dollars]. Just a bit of information and they were able to change their ways and reduce their bills.”
Continue energy audits for vulnerable customers as well as further to current government initiatives, there could be potential to replace faulty appliances causing higher energy bills.
More reference to the National Debt Helpline to ensure customers know where to go for financial help (for example, as shown in the Keep the money. It’s yours. National concessions campaign).
Matched payments, where possible, as Danielle explained that customers start to think “the energy provider is going to help me pay off my debt?” which helps to shift the mentality to ‘we’re in this together’ (acknowledging this may not be the case for all retailers).
Potential to introduce debt waivers, including an automatic debt waiver when there’s family violence.

Want to watch the full recording of ‘Stories from the frontline of the cost-of-living crunch’ session?

Listen to the full session to gain further insight into what financial counsellors are seeing in their casework and the impacts the cost-of-living crisis is having on their energy and water bills.

About this event

This event was part of the Know Your Customers + Communities – Community of Practice dedicated to building capability around robust and fit-for-purpose customer, community, and stakeholder engagement, and building organisational cultures that value the customer voice in decision making.

Know Your Customers + Communities is a collaboration with between the Energy Charter and Water Services Association of Australia under our Collaboration Memo of Understanding (MoU).

To become a regular member of this Community of Practice, please contact Bec Jolly, Director Collaboration  bec.jolly@theenergycharter.com.au.

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The story of energy – An artwork is by Ngarrindjeri artist, Jordan Lovegrove

More about the art and the artist, Jordan Lovegrove…

Jordan is a Ngarrindjeri visual storyteller and artist known for his captivating contemporary and abstract art. You can see more of his work here.

With 12 years of experience, Jordan has developed a vibrant and dynamic style, drawing inspiration from his Ngarrindjeri heritage, his artwork showcases cultural symbolism and a unique artistic vision.

Alongside his art, Jordan is also skilled in graphic design, specializing in creating visually appealing reports, Reconciliation Action plans, logos & branding. He seamlessly blends traditional and modern techniques to produce visually stunning and contemporary designs.

The artwork by Jordan produced for the Energy Charter tells the story of energy, how it connects all of Australia and the Energy Charter’s commitment to create a better energy future for all Australians.

The centrepiece of the artwork represents the Energy Charter’s five core principles dedicated to better outcomes for customers and their communities.

The three coloured sections and symbols represent the transition to a cleaner future; blue is hydro, orange is solar, and green is wind.

The meeting places around the outside and pathways that connects them represents like-minded energy organisations across Australia collaborating and connecting people together for the betterment of communities.

These communities are represented by the pattern on the inside of the artwork.

Jordan was brought to us by Ochre Dawn, a 100% Australian Aboriginal owned and Supply Nation Certified, company. Company founder and proud Peramangk and Ngarrindjeri woman, Rebecca Wessels, explains…

“As Aboriginal people, we are natural storytellers – it’s part of our makeup. As an Aboriginal-owned branding and marketing company, storytelling is our business”.

Ochre Dawn helps others to tell their story in visually captivating ways. They do this by being the hands that write, that paint, that create; being the minds that ideate, being the voices that declare true identities and unleash a truly Australian existence.

For more information visit their website www.ochredawn.com.au.

October 2023 News Update

In this October 2023 News Update, we’re excited to announce the Energy Charter Signatory 2022-23 Disclosures* are now live on our website! These Disclosures are part of our annual Accountability Process: a critical transparency and accountability process to build trust with customers and communities.

CEO Council Chair

Community of Practice – Financial and mental wellbeing

A dive into financial and mental wellbeing with Beyond Blue

In our August Know Your Customers + Communities – Community of Practice, we heard from Beyond Blue and how their Services Guide for Financial and Mental wellbeing can be used by energy & water customer teams to better support customers experiencing financial and mental health stress.

Beyond Blue is an Australian, not-for-profit organisation, whose vision is to help all people in Australia achieve their best possible mental health. Representing them was Irene Verins, their Wellness and Prevention Lead. She oversees development of research relating to Financial and Mental Wellbeing, and the design of tools and resources to support the community. Irene also oversees the Parenting and Mental Health portfolio.

Irene explained the purpose of the session was two-fold:

to introduce Beyond Blue’s research, tools and resources and explore how they might be useful to your sector
to build understanding between the energy, water and mental health services sectors.

What is financial and mental wellbeing and what does the research tell us about it?

Financial wellbeing is being able to meet current and ongoing expenses and commitments, being financially comfortable to be able to make choices to allow one to enjoy life, feeling secure about the financial future and having resilience to cope with financial adversity.

While financial challenges refers to any financial circumstances, thoughts and feelings that may negatively impact financial wellbeing (for example financial hardship, debt, unemployment, loss of income, low income)

In turn, mental wellbeing reflects a state of wellbeing in which every individual realises their own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to their community.

While mental health challenges is an umbrella term that covers diagnosed mental health conditions, as well as any other mental health issues that may negatively impact mental health but may not meet the criteria for a diagnosed illness.

Beyond Blue’s recent Money and Mental Health Report found people experiencing financial challenges were at least twice as likely to experience mental health challenges and vice versa. We found that those people most affected by financial and mental challenges were:

young people,
women,
First Nations, and
small business owners.

What are factors that influence financial and mental wellbeing?

Relationships – People who felt they had no one to lean on are more likely to experience financial and mental health challenges. And withdrawal from community and social interactions is a common response to financial challenges.
Life transitions – Young adults transition from school to university or their first-time job, transitioning out of work and into retirement. If support is not available, transitions can quickly become risky moments.
Cultural narratives about success – often lead to expectations on what being financially stable symbolises. The environment you live in, or the expectations surrounding your circumstance may create a culture that contributes to self-blame or feeling ashamed. Job and income loss may lead to shame that you are not meeting expectations of managing your financial position and your family responsibilities. This was prominent for small business owners.
Stigma – plays a significant role in both mental and financial health and inhibits help-seeking. So often we hear that people feel enormous shame when they talk about financial difficulties, and this can deter them from seeking help when they need it most.
Adverse life events – are often outside your control and can be coupled with trauma. These may include divorce, separation, becoming widowed, job loss and family violence. These situations can lead to unexpected and rapid changes in income and financial stability.

This is important because a recent unpublished report has found that 37% of Australians reported that cost of living was the issues having the greatest negative impact on their mental health.

How can the Services Guide for Financial and Mental wellbeing help?

Developed in partnership with Financial Counselling Australia, this Guide provides practical advice on how services from both energy + water sectors, can provide greater support to customers.

We are not asking the energy and water sectors to become mental health counsellors or financial councillors. The aim of this Guide is to build the awareness and capability of energy + water sectors to work with mental health services, showing how they can both work more closely together. This flow on effect of bringing sectors together will drive action on support and referral options.

The Guide will help you:

Depict signs & behaviors of people in financial or mental hardship
Apply models and approaches in assessing hardship
Drive action on support and referral options.

A key tool in the Guide that you can have on your desk as a reference when you are meeting with clients is this continuum. It will help you evaluate a person’s financial and mental wellbeing. It starts with ‘In crisis’ and moves through stages until we get to ‘Thriving’.

Financial and mental wellbeing journeys are non-linear, meaning they can shift and change over time. That’s why managing financial and mental wellbeing together is important at all stages of the continuum. Whichever stage is identified by a customer along the continuum, there are broad actions and support you can provide in subsequent pages of the services guide.

Helpful resources

Watch the ‘Support customers with financial & mental wellbeing’ session

If you would like to watch the Know Your Customers + Communities – Financial and mental wellbeing session that explored inclusion, you can watch the recorded session here.

About this event

This event was part of the Know Your Customers + Communities Community of Practice dedicated to building capability around robust and fit-for-purpose customer, community, and stakeholder engagement, and building organisational cultures that value the customer voice in decision making.

Know Your Customers + Communities is a collaboration with between the Energy Charter and Water Services Association of Australia under our Collaboration Memo of Understanding (MoU).

To become a regular member of this Community of Practice, please contact Bec Jolly, Director Collaboration at bec.jolly@theenergycharter.com.au.

#BT

September 2023 News Update

In the September 2023 News Update, CEO Council Chair, Guy Chalkley states the importance of the accountability and transparency mechanism for better outcomes for consumers and communities. At the end of this month, Full Energy Charter Signatories will publicly share their annual Disclosures on how they have met their commitments to the five Energy Charter customer principles and opportunities for continuous improvement.

We also provide an update to the #BetterTogether Life Support initiative and critical findings in the 2022 Australian Energy Foundation Report as well as the four key benefits of the initiative.

Our latest First Nations Engagement Community of Practice session is also available to watch.

CEO Council Chair

August 2023 News Update

In the August 2023 News Update, CEO Council Chair, Guy Chalkley welcomes AusNet Services as a Full Signatory and Marinus Link as a #BetterTogether Collaborator. The Knock to Stay Connected Customer Code also held its first Customer Code Council (CCC) meeting in July where they appointed the Independent Chair and Code Administrator.

We also provide an update to the National Concessions Campaign ‘Keep the money. It’s yours’ and how it’s reaching those who are missing out on energy concessions, as well as how to get involved.

CEO Council Chair

Resilience Community of Practice – Responding to trauma

An essential connection to services and assistance

The Energy Charter’s Disaster Response Playbook recognises that following a disaster event, utility service providers are often a first point of contact for people as they provide an essential service for recovery.

They are an important part of the disaster response and recovery ecosystem as a ‘connector’ to other services and assistance. However, sometimes staff:

Lack the training and feel unprepared to support customers and peers who have experienced trauma, which can have negative impacts for mental health and wellbeing of both parties.
Are unclear on what the scope of their role is when responding to a disaster (i.e., when to refer to another service) which leaves them trying to ‘do it all’.
Experience personal trauma as a result the disaster, while also playing professional role in disaster response and recovery activities.

In our July Resilience Community of Practice, Alexandra Howard, Director, Disasters and Public Health Emergencies at Phoenix Australia offered strategies to help staff better recognise and respond to trauma in disaster impacted communities.

Here’s our key takeaways from Alex’s session

Disaster impacts are multi-faceted with impacts across multiple areas.

Within the essential services sector, we can often be focused on responding to build environment and economic/financial impacts. However, whether we know it or not, most of us in the disaster eco-system, also have a role in human phyco-social impacts

Image: “Multi-faceted impacts of disaster”, Pheonix Australia presentation

Acknowledging this, it can be helpful to apply a ‘trauma lens’ to all of the disaster preparedness, response, and recovery activities we undertake.

This is not about making everyone a counsellor or psychologist, rather the purpose is to help us to set boundaries and act within our skill set, taking a ‘no harm’ approach.

There are four common reactions to trauma and each can play out in several ways:

Changes in mental or cognitive capacity
Physiological or bodily changes
Changes in behaviour
Emotional changes.

All of these reactions are linked to our “Fight, Flight and Freeze response (our neurobiological responses to threat)

Image: “Common Responses”, Pheonix Australia presentation

It’s likely that all people will experience these responses, however, for most these will subside over time. However, sometimes we can get stuck in a ‘Fight, Flight and Freeze’ heightened awareness loop, constantly scanning for danger and being on high alert.

One of the things that puts people at greater risk of this over the long term, is exposure to secondary stressors.

Research has shown that even 10 years after the 2009 bushfires, impacted communities experienced higher rates of mental health disorders, difficulties with schooling and other challenges.

So, what can we do to reduce secondary stressors and support better long-term outcomes for disaster impacted communities?

Here’s a few quick tips:

Reduced memory and concentration, as well as difficulty planning and making decisions are common trauma responses. It’s important to consider an individual’s capacity to engage with complex processes immediately after disaster.

Feeling on edge and avoiding reminders of trauma are also a common trauma responses. We can help by reducing the number of times we ask customers and communities to re-tell their story. We can also avoid asking for unnecessary detail that is not essential to the task.

It’s not unusual for people to feel as if they are ‘going crazy’ and are out of control. We can help by giving people a sense of choice and the opportunity to regain a level of control over their personal situation.

Connectedness is one of the most important protective factors after disaster and energy. Essential service providers play a critical role in repairing the physical infrastructure that enables connectedness by resorting power and phone networks. They also play a key role within physical community spaces, such as emergency recovery and evacuation centres that support physical community connectedness during and immediately after a disaster event.

Key reflection points

During the session, Alex asked participants to reflect on a few simple things that could have big impacts in supporting better personal, organisational and community outcomes. Take a moment to consider…

Where’s the opportunity to create a learning loop?

It’s essential to share back to enable continuous improvement. Who else in your organisation has a “front-line” role? How can you share learnings, training options and resources with them?

How can you prepare to support your own ‘connectedness’ needs?

How can you build the networks you might rely on in a disaster now? What can you do to keep these networks present and familiar, so it feels natural and intuitive to lean on them when you need to?

About this event

This event is part of the Energy Charter’s Resilience Community of Practice dedicated to helping customers and communities better prepare, respond and recover from disaster events.

Every second month, the Energy Charter host a Community of Practice, including expert-led discussions building on the topics covered in the Energy Charter’s Disaster Response Playbook:

Communication and Education – where do communities get information, how is it delivered and who needs to know? This includes sharing learnings on successful communication and education campaigns as an essential aspect of disaster preparedness, response and recovery.
Coordination and Collaboration – what are the opportunities to better work together across the energy sector and within the broader eco-system? This includes better practice case studies on successful collaboration.
Planning and Preparedness – what is our role in building community and individual capacity to plan and prepare for a disaster? This includes opportunities to build resilience ownership and literacy within communities, so they can better respond in a disaster.
Learning loops – It’s essential to share back to enable continuous improvement. This includes sharing insights from recent disaster events and building a resilience learning library.

Learn more on the dedicated Resilience Community of Practice page here.

#BT Resilience