I was very happy to hear Malcolm Turnbull talk about using price signals in urban water policy on Sydney ABC radio this morning. He discussed a scheme in which individual users (whether just residential users I’m not sure) would be allocated a certain amount of usage and the relevant water utility would charge them more if they used more than their allocation, and would give the user some amount of money if they used less than their allocation.
For these price signals to have some impact, the charges/payments would probably have to be much more substantial than water charges are now as anecdotally, water charges are pretty small at the moment.
This scheme sounds better than the present one, and may well lead to water being used more efficiently than at present, but at a guess I don’t know if it’s sufficient. Perhaps a cap and trade scheme would be better?
In response to a question from a listener, he also was in favour of units being individually metered for water which was nice, as I wrote about this, in addition to renters being directly charged for their water use rather than through their rent, on my blog a couple of months ago!
Probably not coincidentally, this report, available on Turnbull’s web-site, is all about urban water policy.
No doubt everything that can help increase the supply of water, and manage its demand, should be considered. Talk about a challenge!
