Environmental activists are celebrating the closure of AGL’s Liddell energy plant, which can start shutting down utterly this week after the corporate deemed it too outdated to proceed working.
However some worry the closure will create additional turbulence inside Australia’s power market, with no assure of how it is going to be changed.
Federal opposition spokesman for Climate Change and Energy Ted O’Brien mentioned shutting down the Muswellbrook plant, in NSW’s Hunter area, will strip ten per cent of the state’s complete power era capability.
He challenged the Albanese Government to disclose its plans to exchange coal fireplace energy stations as they’re progressively phased out between now and 2035.
“The Coalition supports an orderly transition towards a cleaner energy future, but you don’t demolish 80 per cent of the nation’s baseload energy capacity without a replacement ready to go,” Mr O’Brien mentioned.
Greenpeace Australia Pacific head of advocacy and technique, Glenn Walker, mentioned coal-fired energy stations like Liddell will probably be changed by giant quantities of wind and photo voltaic power, coupled with huge batteries.
By the top of this month, three of Liddell’s remaining seven energy items will probably be decommissioned, leading to 1260MW much less electrical energy within the NSW grid.
The shutdown was initially flagged by AGL in 2015 after the operator discovered the plant had “reached the end of its technical life”.
“Despite the initial protesting from small-minded politicians and commentators, this announcement helped spur a massive four-fold increase in renewable energy production in NSW, meaning dirty Liddell will be replaced by clean energy,” Mr Walker mentioned.
Mr O’Brien mentioned the Coalition’s proposal to exchange Liddell with the 660MW Kurri Kurri gasoline energy station was being undermined by the present authorities’s insistence it ought to run on 30 per cent inexperienced hydrogen.
“Labor’s plan for Kurri Kurri to run on 30 per cent hydrogen is neither achievable nor costed, and its pig-headed refusal to accept that reality only heightens the risk of the lights going out,” Mr O’Brien mentioned.
Mr Walker mentioned corporations like AGL, together with authorities, may lead Australia’s inexperienced power transition.
“The lesson from Liddell should be that companies like AGL and politicians alike need to show courage and get on with the job of cleaning up our dirty energy system,” he mentioned.
“AGL’s remaining coal burning power stations in Victoria and New South Wales are equally unreliable polluting clunkers. The sooner they are shut down the better it will be for the climate and the health of local communities,”
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
