Liddell power plant – Australia’s oldest coal-fired plant – shuts down for good
Australia’s oldest coal-fired power station – which generated electricity for more than a million homes – is going out for good: ‘Goodbye old girl’
- Liddell’s power plant was permanently closed on Friday
- It was the oldest coal-fired station in Australia
- Applause at the closing of the power plant
Australia’s oldest coal-fired power station, Liddell, has been shut down to the applause of workers after more than 50 years of service to NSW and the national power grid.
Thousands of locals have worked at the site over the years, and many gathered on Friday morning to say goodbye to the plant they call “the old girl.”
While climate activists celebrate the demise of the coal-fired “clunker,” critics fear closing the Muswellbrook plant in the Hunter region will strip 10 percent of the state’s power.
Owner AGL Energy insists the lights stay on and said it has been preparing for the closure for the past seven years by adding more wind and sun.
A lone worker walks through the power plant’s pulverization mill on Thursday, Liddell’s last full day of work
Once the equivalent of more than a million homes were supplied with power, the carefully designed shutdown that began a year ago will come to an end this morning.
More than 90 percent of the materials at the plant are expected to be recycled during the demolition, including 70,000 tonnes of steel – more than the total weight of steel mills for the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
The demolition will start in 2024 and will take about two years.
Boilers, chimneys, turbine houses, the coal-fired power station and various buildings will be removed and the site will be leveled with crushed concrete.
But transmission links will be maintained as the site gears up to become an industrial energy hub equipped with a grid-scale battery.
As Australia’s largest producer of electricity and largest emitter, AGL faced government pressure and a shareholder revolt led by billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes for being too slow to exit coal and gas.
The Liddell coal-fired power station – Australia’s oldest – was shut down for the last time on Friday morning
Under new management, AGL promises to be ‘net zero’ of operations with all of its coal-fired power stations to close by 2035 – including Loy Yang, which supplies nearly a third of Victoria’s power.
AGL’s Torrens Island gas-fired power station, also over 50 years old and South Australia’s largest, is also getting a makeover as an industrial hub.
The future of Australia’s largest coal-fired power station, Eraring, owned by Origin Energy and located north of Sydney on the shores of Lake Macquarie, is still up in the air.
Government briefings suggest that Eraring’s closure is more risky than Liddell’s closure and would create a shortage of supply.