AGL Energy, which owns large coal fired power stations in Victoria and NSW, pointed to its Greenhouse Gas Policy, which says: “AGL will not build, finance or acquire new conventional coal-fired power stations in Australia (i.e. without carbon capture and storage). AGL will not extend the operating life of any of its existing coal-fired power stations.”
“So, therefore, no, we won’t build any clean coal power stations,” a spokeswoman said in an email. AGL owns the 2,200 megawatt Loy Yang A brown coal power station in Victoria and the 2600MW Bayswater and 2,000 MW Liddell black coal power stations in NSW.
Origin Energy, which owns the 2,880 MW Eraring black coal power station in NSW, said via a spokeswoman “Eraring is our only coal interest and we have previously flagged plans to close that by the early 2030s.”
From Do-nothing Malcolm’s yesterday’s press club address:
Energy bills are also making up an increasing proportion of household budgets.
If you doubt the central importance of energy security, pay a visit to South Australia as I did when I visited Port Lincoln on Saturday.
The tuna fishermen and seafood processors have been hit by constant power failures, massive price hikes and to rub salt into the wound, the need to invest in more diesel generators to provide backup when the SA grid fails next time.
But the problem goes well beyond South Australia. We have an abundance of coal, gas, sun and wind resources – not to mention uranium.
And yet our energy is among the most expensive in the OECD.
States are setting huge renewable targets, far beyond that of the national RET, with no consideration given to the baseload power and storage needed for stability.
South Australia, now with the most expensive and least secure energy, has had its wake-up call. One storm blacked out an entire State.
But Labor snores on, heedless of what awaits the rest of the country if Labor Governments, and would-be governments, continue their mindless rush into renewables.
This is not good enough. Australia should be able to achieve the policy trifecta of energy that is affordable, reliable and secure, and that meets our substantial global emissions reduction commitments as agreed in the Paris climate change treaty.
And all governments and industry must work together to achieve that trifecta.
Families and businesses need reliable and affordable power.
Nothing will more rapidly de-industrialise Australia and deter investment more than more and more expensive, let alone less reliable, energy.
Bill Shorten’s energy plan whether it is a 50% RET by 2030 or double our Paris emissions reduction target by 2030 is a sure recipe to deliver much more expensive and much less reliable power.
In Victoria the closure of Hazelwood will cost the state 20% of its electricity capacity, yet the Victorian Labor Government supports a 40% renewable target and opposes all onshore gas development – conventional and unconventional, while Victorian gas reserves are beginning to decline as exploration fails to replace production.
Increasing gas supply in Australia is vital for our energy future and vital for industries and jobs, but State bans on onshore gas development will result in more expensive and less reliable energy.
And without gas, or substantial new forms of energy storage, where will the firming power come from to support intermittent renewables like wind and solar?
We are willing to sit down with the states to determine the right incentives to enable desperately needed sustainable onshore gas development.
Energy storage – long neglected in Australia – will also be a priority this year.
Last week, at my request, ARENA and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) agreed to work together on a new funding round for large scale storage and other flexible capacity projects, including pumped hydro.
I have also written to Alan Finkel asking him to advise on the role of storage and pumped hydro in stabilising the grid.
Large scale storage will support variable renewables like wind and solar, it will get more value out of existing baseload generation and it will enhance grid stability. And we are getting on with it.
Turning to coal. Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal – we have invested $590 million since 2009 in clean coal technology research and demonstration, and yet we do not have one modern High Efficiency Low Emissions (HELE) coal fired power station let alone one with CCS?
Here’s the current picture – old, high emissions coal fired power stations are closing down, reducing baseload capacity. They can not simply be replaced by gas – because it’s too expensive – or by wind or solar because they are intermittent.
Storage has a big role to play, that’s true, but we will need more synchronous baseload power and as the world’s largest coal exporter we have a vested interest in showing that we can provide both lower emissions and reliable base load power with state of the art clean coal fired technology.
The next incarnation of our national energy policy should be technology agnostic – it’s security and cost that matter most, not how you deliver it. Policy should be “all of the above technologies” working together to deliver the trifecta of secure and affordable power while meeting our emission reduction commitments.
This isn’t an abstract issue. Higher electricity prices mean more pressure on household budgets and businesses. That’s why energy will be a defining debate in this Parliament. We’re determined to help families and businesses by making electricity affordable and reliable; Labor’s policies mean higher power prices and energy insecurity.
The battlelines have been drawn – it is clear that the Coalition stands for cheaper energy.
OK, so this is not all bad. Technology “agnostic” is good. Looking at energy storage is good. Unfortunately the best way to deliver those two outcomes cheaply and efficiently was a carbon price, as Do-nothing knows very well, having lost the Liberal leadership over it last time around.
The new and improved Do-nothing Malcolm appears to still accept that bringing about change to carbon emissions is necessary but without a carbon price the RET is the nation’s only potent enough policy tool to make it happen. The states are doing the heavy lifting for him on that front so it’s a bit silly complaining about it. Especially so since it was a mechanism created by the Howard Government!
It’s also pretty stupid claiming to be technologically agnostic while proposing to subsidise more coal power, though carbon capture and storage should have been pursued vigorously many years ago, and would also have been helped by a carbon price, these days it’s fallen victim to the Coalition’s energy chaos, from David Uren:
But what power company is going to risk up to $2 billion on a new state-of-the-art generator, which might need 20 years to recover its capital cost, when the other side of politics — the alternative government — is determined to render it uneconomic? The life of an Australian government is far too short for the policy Abbott proposes to provide a secure basis for investment.
The effect of such a policy would be to undermine the investments such as a proposed $360 million wind farm at Mount Emerald in Queensland and $150m solar project in central NSW, while doing nothing to stimulate fresh investment in fossil fuels. The Business Council of Australia and the Australian Industry Group have warned against tinkering with the renewable energy target to protect investment in the sector.
Both Malcolm Turnbull and Resources Minister Matt Canavan argue that Australia should be developing new coal-fired power. “We have a vested interest in showing that we can provide both lower emissions and reliable base-load power with state-of-the-art clean coal-fired technology,” the Prime Minister said yesterday. This a pipe dream given the state of energy policy.
It is now 14 years since a go-ahead was given for a new coal-fired power station in Australia, while the toll of coal-fired plants being shuttered is rising, with the next being the imminent closure of Hazelwood in Victoria, supplying 5 per cent of national power. The hot debate in the insurance industry is whether coal-fired power plants can be covered for business interruption. The concern is that if a coal-fired plant suffered a shutdown, state government authorities might not permit it to reopen.
And the AFR:
…Tony Wood, director of the Grattan Institute’s energy program, said the lead times should not be as great if new plant were built where existing coal plant is located but the cost of power from a clean coal plant was about the same as that from gas and clean coal power still emits substantially more carbon dioxide than gas plants.
Quite right though we can’t put it past the government to just go ahead and build a clean coal white elephant itself, which would, of course, only increase power costs given how expensive it remains owing to under-investment, while renewable costs keep falling.
So, it’s gas then. Can Do-nothing help costs on that front? Via the AFR:
Mr Turnbull said increasing gas supply by lifting moratoriums on coal seam gas extraction was “vital for our energy future and vital for industries and jobs but state bans on onshore gas development will result in more expensive and less reliable energy”.
“We are willing to sit down with the states to determine the right incentives to enable desperately-needed sustainable onshore gas development,” he said.
Industry Minister Arthur Sinodinos said one option was to give the states money which would then be passed on to farmers as compensation for their land being accessed for CSG extraction.
Farming communities don’t want more dough for taking the risks associated with fraccing. They don’t want to take the risks, period. Nothing is going to change this and they have all state governments onside. This is more Do-nothing Malcolm policy necrophilia.
Moreover, the source of the high gas price is not local demand, it’s foreign demand via the Gladstone white elephant. The Curtis Island plants are already running below capacity owing to a shortage of gas. New sources of gas supply cheap enough to lower the local price will simply fill ’em up and go offshore. When the plants were built Australian markets lost the power to set the domestic gas price. It’s now set via export net back. If enough new cheap gas is produced to overwhelm Curtis Island capacity then new capacity will be added to amortise the debt of building the bloody things across greater volumes.
There is no way around it except domestic reservation. Everything else is basically bullshit. For the Coalition to refuse to do it on the ideological grounds of “free markets” while at the same time aiming to build its own coal-fired power supply is absurdly contradictory. It is piling policy error on top of market failure.
To put it bluntly, the Coalition has horribly vandalised east coast energy in one giant decade-long political stunt and it is now lost amid its own wreckage.
You will be the one to pay.
