The battle against CoalKeeper, it seems, is never over. Apparently dead after the states — led by the Andrews government in Victoria and the Perrottet government in NSW — rejected a Commonwealth push for a “capacity mechanism” to include fossil fuels last year, it has now re-emerged under NSW Labor, in an even sillier form than that proposed by federal Coalition village idiot Angus Taylor.
Claiming it was “rescuing the Energy Roadmap“, yesterday NSW Labor announced its response to a Labor-connected consultant’s energy transition review. It included a commitment to:
streamline renewables approvals in the planning system as well as enhance and coordinate community benefit sharing. It will unlock opportunities to connect new renewables to the existing grid outside Renewable Energy Zones. A Consumer Energy Strategy will be developed to unleash the potential of households and businesses to further embrace small-scale renewables like solar in the short-term, without shifting focus and momentum from the delivery of large-scale projects.
Notice the lack of any detail around what form the “streamlining” would take. And what is “enhancing and coordinating community benefit sharing”? By the time we get to “unlocking opportunities” and “unleashing potential of households and businesses” we’re deep into cliché territory.
But the real point was the revival of CoalKeeper, dressed up of course in bureaucratic language. “The government will engage with Origin on its plans for Eraring, at the same time as pursuing all alternative solutions to deliver the renewable generation, transmission and storage solutions that NSW needs.”
As has been repeatedly detailed, there is no case for propping up the Eraring coal-fired power station beyond its scheduled closure date of 2025 — unless, of course, you’re in the NSW division of the CFMMEU, which gave $330,000 to NSW Labor in 2021-22, or the NSW Electrical Trades Union, which gave over $100,000. Or you’re Origin Energy, which has given over $35,000 to NSW Labor since 2008, and over $180,000 to federal Labor.
What Chris Minns and energy minister Penny Sharpe failed to explain yesterday was exactly how much “engagement” Origin was going to get to keep Eraring running past the end of its life. We know this relic, built in the early Wran years (that’s 12 premiers ago, for those counting) costs several hundred millions in maintenance to keep ticking over now. If NSW Labor has discussed what those life support maintenance costs will be in 2025 and beyond with Origin, it’s refusing to say. Nor is it estimating what it will cost to supply it with more coal.
At least with Angus Taylor’s CoalKeeper we would have known the size of the tax impost on households to prop up his party’s fossil fuel donors, because households were going to have to pay for it through their power bills. But the NSW plan is, apparently, simply to gift Origin taxpayer funding directly. What costing rigour, what verification, what accountability Origin will face for this free money is also a mystery. It’s all about “engagement” at the moment.
Former NSW Treasurer and energy minister Matt Kean, one of the few genuine climate action leaders on either side of politics anywhere in the country, has a good idea of the cost. He dropped a bomb on Minns and Sharpe on Monday when he revealed one expert had informed him there wouldn’t be much change from $3 billion to keep Eraring going for a couple of years.
Sharpe was furious and accused Kean of being responsible for “delays and blowouts” when minister, and said his observations were “not helpful”. Certainly they weren’t helpful for a government trying to revive CoalKeeper under the pretence of keeping the lights on, rather than find a better use for a couple of billion dollars.
And just to repeat a point that the mainstream media seems determined to ignore: it’s not just about CO2 emissions — coal-fired power stations kill people. Eraring is responsible for up to 90 deaths a year, with no one being particularly fussed. NSW taxpayers will be spending billions to help kill a couple hundred people as part of CoalKeeper.
At least federally Labor has the excuse that it inherited a lost decade on climate policy. NSW Labor, however, is trailing badly in the wake of a government committed to real action. And with CoalKeeper, it will go backwards.
NSW Labor — Albo and Minns — rightwing neoliberal ideologists.
NSW Labor has always been a fulcrum for imported US fossil fueled greenwashing and nativism focusing upon refugees, immigrants & population; bipartisan bigotry?
Used to be the joke in Victoria, and mostly true, that the Vic Libs were more socially liberal and green than NSW Labor 🙂 Especially Hamer govt. of ’70s, but now that’s changed with Vic Libs being taken over by Christians etc.
Who is it that is preventing governments from quickly building the wind farms and transmission lines necessary to replace coal fired generators? It is us, the NIMBYS and the voters, egged on by a mainstream media always searching for sensational headlines and controversy. To appease us, Governments embark on extensive public consultation before making any decision. Naturally, the consultative process is always dominated by minority self interest groups and business lobby groups. The welfare of the silent majority does not enter into it. Every proposal for a windfarm or transmission line runs into the same roadblocks. The media is only to happy to provide a megaphone to these groups. Put steel pylons in the ocean to support wind turbines? Sorry, but those steel pylons will kill all the fish and lobsters for miles around and devastate the fishing industry. There will be heartbreaking stories on the TV showing a family whose fishing livelihood is about to be destroyed. Besides, they might be visible from the beach and ruin the view.
How about building the transmission lines necessary to transition to renewable energy? Ditto, more heartbreaking stories featuring poor farming families whose whole livelihood will be destroyed because their sheep or cattle can’t graze anywhere near a HV transmission line without being poisoned by electromagnetic radiation. So there it is, checkmate, wind generation is out, new transmission lines are out, transition to renewable energy is out.
Political decision making is paralysed by the fear of losing the next election. Albanese has admitted that staying in power is of paramount importance, brave decision making is off the table. Effective climate policy, renewable energy policy, housing policy, tax reform, are all too scary to do anything meaningful about. Lets just buy some nuclear submarines and enjoy our stage 3 tax cuts, investment houses and Qantas executive club membership.
In the sea every wind turbine base acts as a FAD (fish attracting device). In the UK the owners of HV transmission lines pay rent to the farmers, so their livestock are immune, apparently. And, strangely, there is no view from the beach, there’s nothing to look at, so the view can only be improved. But, hey, let’s all believe what we’re told. (By the little red hen, I think it was, who thought the sky was falling?)
Yes and it is an indisputable fact that the oil& gas platforms in Bass Strait are a haven for fish, lobsters, seals and other marine creatures. It is interesting how farmers demand taxpayer funded relief for the bushfires, droughts and floods caused by climate change but obstruct the building of the infrastructure necessary to reduce carbon emissions. Of course they all say they support renewable energy……provided it is not anywhere near their property.
Like elsewhere in the ‘Anglosphere’ it’s too easy for Australians to be conditioned in avoiding any govt. or state investment, costs and taxes, that must always be reduced…. unthinkingly….
The vast amounts of cash to keep this clunker on life support will not even stay in Australia………….
…………origin is about to be taken over by the giant vampire squid of Tax Avoidance, Brookfield (just look at the enormous tax-payer funded assets that they have squirreled away in the Caribbean)
The silliest part of the whole deal, purportedly to maintain the (artificially inflated, courtesy of the LNP) “Reliability Standard” is that a major cause of blackouts is a coal-fired power station tripping because of the heat.
So at the very time they are most required, they are most likely to fail……………….
……….and when they do, they take out a big chunk of supply, causing all sorts of problems.
What is NEVER mentioned is that the “Reliability Standard” is set at a figure equivalent to an average of about TEN MINUTES BLACKOUT A YEAR.
(In Lebanon, you would be lucky to get an hour’s worth of power A DAY).
Is it really worth paying such extraordinary amounts to keep something running that may or may not be available when required, may drop out at the most inconvenient times, sends precisely the wrong signal to the developers of RE, and diverts funds that could otherwise have actually fixed the problem………….. only to have the cash end up in a Caribbean Tax Haven?
Yes, for as long as those sweet, sweet donations keep on coming.
Wow, well said.
I could really get up a good rant about this idiocy…………….
………….if the $3 billion price tag is right, the NSW government could purchase 1,500 Tesla Megapack batteries, which would deliver around 3GW of power (compared to Eraring’s “rated” output of 2.8 GW) and 6GWh of storage.
MORE than enough to cover ANY shortfall that might (and I stress, MIGHT) eventuate in the next ten years.
Given Tesla’s performance in the past, these could all be installed by the end of the year.
(I’d continue ranting about Brookfield, but the blood pressure is already in the red zone – maybe later)
Australia today is very much the sum of its first European chapter the Sydney colony – thieves, harlots, drunks, elite inbreds, grifters, self induced sensory deprived, imbeciles, liars, naysayers, and these are only the descriptors for those who ran the place. The Preface being the British discovery.
Interesting fact about where the reliability standard is set. Here in SA years ago when all we had was ‘base-load’ (the holy grail of the anti-renewables mob) brown coal and gas, intermittent load-shedding in the summer peaks was common and just accepted as normal. If the same thing happened now, the anti-renewables mob would be screaming about unreliable renewables.
…. “Carbon captured”?
I’d love to know what goes into the $3B – and why that keeps getting repeated like it’s a justifiable number. Like the load of tripe that Snowy2 was ever going to be $2B…..
Is it a handout – or would maintenance be on a cost plus basis? What’s the detail, BeeKay?