Australia closes oldest coal plant in pivot to renewables

Australia’s oldest coal-fired power station has closed as the country – once a notorious climate laggard – prepares for a seismic shift to renewable energy.

Liddell power station, three hours north of Sydney, was one in a series of aging coal-fired power stations that would close in the next few years.

Built in 1971, Liddell supplied about 10 percent of electricity in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state.

Liddell’s owner, AGL, said on Friday it would take about two years to demolish the colossal facility, freeing up the site for new clean energy projects such as a hydrogen power plant.

“More than 90 percent of the materials in the power plant will be recycled, including 70,000 tonnes of steel – which is more steel than in the Sydney Harbor Bridge,” the company said.

For decades, coal has supplied most of Australia’s electricity, but Mark Diesendorf, a renewable energy expert from the University of New South Wales, told AFP news agency that stations like Liddell were fast becoming unreliable “clunkers”. .

As well as being inefficient, highly polluting and expensive to repair, the continued widespread use of coal-fired power stations would make it nearly impossible to meet Australia’s climate targets.

Australia has long been one of the world’s largest coal producers and exporters, and a series of governments have resisted pressure to scale back the industry.

But the centre-left Labor party elected last year on the promise of climate action has pledged that 82 per cent of the country’s electricity will come from renewable sources by 2030.

This requires a drastic overhaul – while world leaders like Norway generate more than 90 percent of their power from renewable energy sources, Australia currently sits at only about 30 percent.

“The plans are for a fairly rapid phase-out,” Diesendorf told AFP.

“These stations are too late to retire and there is no economic case for replacing them with new coal.”

Under increasing public pressure to tackle the climate crisis, many Australian fossil fuel companies are increasingly preferring to shut down old coal-fired power stations rather than keeping them online.

Australia’s largest coal-fired power station, the Eraring power station in New South Wales, is expected to close in 2025 with a handful more to follow in the next decade.

While these closures will test whether renewables are ready to close the gap, a government report released on Friday indicated Australia was moving in the right direction.

The Australian Energy Market Operator found that record levels of renewable electricity – mainly solar – were already driving down both emissions and electricity prices for households.

Drenched in sunshine and blessed with sparsely populated windswept coasts, Australia has the natural ingredients to be a renewable energy superpower, climate finance expert Tim Buckley told AFP.

“Every damn week there’s a new battery announced, or a new wind farm, or other big projects going forward,” he said.

The tricky part, he added, would be figuring out how to store this energy and pump it across the vast distances between Australian cities and towns.

“We are talking about projects that have not been carried out in Australia for decades, where labor shortages are real and technical problems are to be expected.

“The chances of everything going smoothly between now and 2030 are next to zero.”

Even if things go smoothly, Australia still faces huge challenges in meeting the target of net-zero emissions by 2050.

Over the past decade, an ideological brawl called the “climate wars” has dominated Australian politics, repeatedly undermining efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Researchers found in 2020 that 8 percent of Australians denied climate change, more than double the global average.

And while Australia plans to clean up its domestic energy market, the economy is still fueled by coal and gas exports.

Dozens of new coal mines, oil fields and gas projects are in the government’s planning pipeline.

“As far as gas and coal mines still under development for export are concerned, we are a terrible laggard,” said Diesendorf. “It’s a real contradiction.”