The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has published the 2025 Enhanced Locational Information (ELI) report with the aim of supporting more informed investment and decision-making processes in the National Electricity Market.
Rapidly decarbonising its electricity and energy system is essential for Australia to meet its obligations under the Paris Agreement.
As the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia, electricity generation represents a critical intervention point.
The use of fossil fuels to produce electricity and stationary energy for commercial and industrial purposes accounts for 54.9 per cent of Australia’s total emissions.
Transitioning to renewable energy will not only reduce these emissions directly but also create powerful ripple effects that drive decarbonisation across other economic sectors.
This is especially urgent given the window to keep global warming within 1.5 degrees is still open, but narrowing.
The 2025 ELI report provides an important step in supporting this transition, through improved transparency on locational transmission capacity, congestion, and curtailment, which are increasingly critical inputs for investors in new renewable supply seeking to optimise transmission access.
Climateworks Centre recognises that the data sets in the ELI have important wider value and use in the transition, to address known gaps for planning for regional planners and investors in new demand-side activities.
With demand growing rapidly to support decarbonisation, addressing these gaps has become increasingly urgent, as it supports the transition in key industrial regions and integration of more flexible demand to optimise renewables and lower the costs of system reliability.
Climateworks suggests some modest additional information in the ELI could begin to address these needs, materially increasing the value and impact.
These additions could provide first steps towards developing regional ISPs and a demand-side statement of opportunities.
Recommendation:
AEMO develops the ELI in the future to increase its value for regional energy planning and electricity demand-side investors.
We suggest that additional considerations would include:
- Local historic demand and forecast assumptions, with clear translation from related assumptions in the ELI
- Identification of areas with material expected demand growth (such as industrial projects or precincts) and the potential impact on local curtailment
- Mapping of known flexible demand capacity (such as consumer energy resources, behind-the-meter batteries, virtual power plants and price‑responsive loads)
- Consideration of potential demand-side opportunities for reducing curtailment and providing network support, in line with the current analysis of the impact of additional storage.
- Integration with further local insights linked to the new demand-side factors statements in the 2026 ISP, such as sub-transmission developments and the potential impact of CER coordination.
ELI reports are emerging as a valuable tool to support the transition to a reliable, low‑cost net‑zero electricity system.
ELI is a key foundation element for place‑based energy planning that can underpin Regional Integrated System Plans (Regional ISPs) and a Demand Side Statement of Opportunities (DSOO).