This report applies behavioural insights to the design of energy bills to inform the AER’s development of a new Better Bills Guideline. 

The policy context: In March 2021, the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) released its final rule determination requiring the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) to publish a Better Bills Guideline for retailers determining bill content and billing requirements. 

BETA partnered with the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) to apply behavioural insights to the design of energy bills. BETA conducted: a literature review, and a survey and 6 survey experiments (randomised controlled trials), involving over 14,000 Australians. In addition, the AER commissioned 6 focus groups with people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and 3 focus groups with older energy consumers.

The Final Report synthesises findings from this research, focusing on 3 questions.

1. Bill content: What is the priority content for inclusion on the bill?
2. Bill simplification: How do we reduce information overload in bills?
3. Bill comprehension: How do we maximise comprehension of bill content?

The Final Report is accompanied by:

• a technical appendix detailing research methods, survey questions, intervention designs, and results from additional analysis
• data files containing survey results and statistical tables from the RCTs
• unit record data from this research, which is available through the Australian Data Archive
• a literature review.