Scott Stacey

Scott is an economist at Frontier Economics with 25+ years of experience applying economics to government policy formulation, competition assessments, regulatory strategy, litigation and arbitrations, as well as due diligence reviews for major transactions.

He has worked for clients across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Pacific Islands. With experience in electricity, gas, ports, water, telecommunications, transport, and aviation sectors, his broad perspective allows him to consider and compare approaches across industries.

Prior to Frontier Economics, Scott co-founded Incenta Economic Consulting and was a consultant at PwC Australia. He’s also had roles at the Australian Energy Market Commission and the Essential Services Commission of Victoria.

Energy market analysis

Scott has worked on key Australian energy market issues since the early years of the National Electricity Market. This has included lead roles in some of the first reviews on the impact of climate change policy on energy markets, the role for the efficient use of demand-side resources, and network regulation for electricity businesses. He has also had a lead role in a recent wide-reaching Ministerial review of the New Zealand electricity market.

He has also advised on competition issues within energy markets. Examples include:

• Advising the Australian Energy Regulator on the approach to assessing market power in the wholesale market given participant bidding behaviour and the state of the contract market.
• Assisting HSF Kramer acting for the Queensland Government in a large‑scale class action claiming that CS Energy abused their market power.
• Assistance to the Economic Regulation Authority of Western Australia on its claim that State‑owned power generator and retailer, Synergy, had been misusing its market power to damage competitors in the WA electricity market.
• As part of the broader review of the New Zealand electricity market, advising on the state of competition in the New Zealand market given the presence of four large vertically integrated energy businesses.

Economic regulation

Scott has been involved in many of the key regulatory policy debates that have taken place in Australia, especially those focused on the electricity sector.

Notably, he had a lead role in developing the rules for the economic regulation of transmission networks, and contributed to the formulation of the corresponding rules for distribution networks. He has also worked with both government and private sector clients on projects focused on either implementing or improving the framework for economic regulation.

Examples of Scott’s experience in economic regulation include:

• Regulatory due diligence for regulated assets, including for example, Victorian port assets and NSW electricity networks.
• Advice to Australian and New Zealand telecommunication businesses, such as Telstra and Chorus on the application of the building block approach to regulation.
• Advice to water businesses such as Sydney Water, telecommunication businesses such as Chorus, and electricity businesses such as CitiPower & Powercor, on the application of incentive schemes to their business, including potential new schemes as well as enhancements to existing schemes.
• For the Western Australian Government, the design of a new third-party access regime for a regional electricity network in Western Australia. The access regime needed to be ‘fit-for-purpose’ in the context of the size of the network and the market participants.
• Advice across many projects on the use of depreciation in economic regulation, for example, for Transgrid in relation to financeability, and for gas distribution businesses, such as Australian Gas Networks to address stranded asset risks.
• Advice on efficient connection pricing frameworks for electricity and gas networks in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia.

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