This week the AER, the Australian national energy regulator, published (click here) a consultation regarding its Draft Market Monitoring Information Orders requiring firms to report their power and gas transactions to the regulator.
This consultation is the second iteration on the topic by the AER, the first being this consultation launched in November 2024 seeking input on new rules that would require firms to report details of wholesale power and gas contracts to AER, in a similar vein as required by regulations such as REMIT in the EU (albeit vastly more simplified). In May 2025, the AER announced that it would not immediately implement the reporting rules but rather that it intended to consult the market further on the topic before proceeding (click here).
Fast forward to this week where the AER made good on its promise by publishing a second iteration of the Draft Order (click here) for consultation, which builds on the first. The newly revised Draft Order may be found here (28-pages). In line with the first iteration, the Draft Order would require five categories of market participant to report data at various frequencies throughout the year, including a one-off exercise of back-reporting for each year starting in January 2021. The categories defined include Retailer, Market Generator, Integrated Resource Provider (a party that “owns, controls or operates a Market Bidirectional Unit that is connected to, or supplies electricity to, a transmission system or distribution system”) and Trading Company.
Three reporting frequencies are set out, namely One-off, Quarterly and Annual. The data schema for the quarterly reporting of Exchange and OTC contracts are specified on pages 18-21. Annual reporting is higher level, being mostly a qualitative catch-all for activity over the year, some of which is provided by the exchanges and which also includes qualitative requests regarding corporate structure, aimed to allow AER to contextualise the respective roles of the various categories of market participants (see pages 22-25). As per the first iteration, the Draft Order also contains both data submission and exemption application forms.
The consultation is free-form and does not include any structured questions. Firms interested in responding may do so by email to ContractMarketMonitoring@aer.gov.au with ‘Wholesale Market Monitoring and Reporting – MMIO-ELEC-2025-02 submission’ in the subject line. Submissions must be sent by close of business on 04 November 2025.
