Australia’s green energy superpower hope is that abundant wind and solar natural resources will one day generate clean electricity that restores the cheap energy advantage that once came from burning fossil fuels. But according to investment bank UBS’s latest outlook for the National Electricity Market, the near-term reality amid the troubled renewables transition is consumers paying higher than expected electricity prices to the end of the decade.

That would break Labor’s election promise of lower power bills amid the cost of living squeeze, as well as having implications for the Reserve Bank’s low inflation mandate.