The Australian Energy Regulator will release its interim decision on Wednesday, where it's expected to increase the maximum retail electricity fee for homes and small businesses in NSW, South Australia and southern Queensland.

It couldn't come at a worse time for single mother Melika Jordan who lives in social housing with her seven year old daughter.

The pair, from Lake Macquarie in NSW, is already forced to sleep in a swag in their living room to save on heating costs and protect themselves from the mould spreading through their home.

Ms Jordan told ACM she was being severely impacted by the continuing cost of living crisis, and didn't have "any hope" to pay increased energy bills.

Ms Jordan said she had no appliances switched on except the fridge and skipped multiple meals a day as well as limiting the use of heating and air conditioning.

Nor did she have a social life as she couldn't afford to go out. She has even stopped seeing a therapist.

"I never really have more than one meal a day, and sometimes I'll go without until the following day," she said.

"[It] just depends on how much I have left, or what my daughter wants, and whether or not I can make it to the next day."

Ms Jordan, who is reliant on Centrelink payments, says extra work was not a possibility because of her carer obligations.

"I don't have a very good outlook on life, especially living here, I've only just been able to pull myself into the mindset of okay, maybe it's not bad everywhere, maybe it's just Australia," she said.

The Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS) is calling on the government to help people like Ms Jordan by wiping off their energy debt.

It wants the government to provide an emergency payment of up to $2,000 to help people in energy hardship.

Climate and energy program director Kellie Caught told ACM another 20 per cent increase in energy bills could be catastrophic for low earners.

Last year, ACOSS conducted a survey which revealed 70 per cent of low-income earners were no longer using heating, and 46 per cent were going to bed early to keep warm.

Ninety per cent of people in the survey said their inability to warm and cool their homes was making them sick and 30 per cent had needed medical care as a result.

"What we're finding is some people have air conditioning, but they can't put it on because they can't afford it, so they're getting sick because of that," Ms Caught said.

"We know other people are going without food and medicine, so that they can afford their energy bill."

"More people die in Australia from heat waves than they do any other extreme weather event combined, so this is real, it impacts on health and sadly leads to death."

But, rising energy costs won't just affect people at home, there are also fears it will have a serious impact on businesses.

Northern NSW's Husk Distillers chief executive Paul Messenger told ACM running the business in the current climate was difficult as it was an energy intensive process.

He said they were already trying to contend with significant energy rises since the start of the year, when their cost of power rose from about seven cents per kilowatt hour to 22 cents.

"Obviously, we're under rising cost pressures right across the board, it is challenging for any business," he said.

"From January 1 the energy cost per kilowatt hour tripled overnight, so that was the biggest whack that we've had."

"If those sorts of hits become common, and we have seen energy prices going up over the last five, six, eight years, well it's gonna have more and more of an impact on us."

Mr Messenger said the business was looking at a number of methods to counter the rising cost of electricity.

He said he had installed solar panels, and was even looking at converting the waste gas from sugarcane into electricity, but at the moment the operation was too small-scale for it to be a viable option.

"We have installed solar, that's certainly going to help us, but it's not going to address the underlying issue of the changing landscape in the energy mix," he said.

"Electricity has always been pretty cheap, and for what we get for that we can do a hell of a lot with it, but I think those days are certainly changing and it looks like it's going to become more expensive for us in the long run."

Business NSW's senior director of regions and visitor economy Paula Martin was concerned about the impact of rising energy costs.

She said more than one quarter of businesses have said they will shut down if conditions don't change.

"For 28 per cent of businesses to tell us they're considering closing their doors in the next three months, I think that's really scary, and we haven't faced a situation like that for a very long time," she said.

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Even if businesses manage to stay open, there could still be a big impact on jobs.

According to Ms Martin, about 30 per cent of businesses across NSW predicted they would have to reduce the size of their workforce.

Ahead of the state election, Business NSW will be campaigning for more assistance from the government.

Ms Martin said the government needed to help businesses in transitioning toward renewable energy while providing some relief from costly bills.