golden energy age for australia will cost..., page-6

Han
Will you read this link and comment?

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/origin-wins-as-nsw-coal-subsidy-scandal-unwinds-32814

From the link
The NSW coal subsidy scandal has reached its natural apotheosis. The hare-brained plan to build a massive new coal mine and ship the subsidised commodity to the state’s black coal generators so that they can deliver “cheap coal” has been abandoned, but at least one generator will be compensated by the government for having to pay something like the market price of coal. Only the taxpayer can feel aggrieved and out of pocket.

The NSW government’s coal scandal goes back to the previous Labor government and its bloody minded efforts to sell its generating assets. It proposed to build the Cobbora coal mine near Dubbo at a cost of $1.5 billion so it could deliver a subsidised price of coal at little more than $30/tonne, a fraction of the then export price. It did this because, without such a contract, it was told that the state’s generators were effectively worthless and a sale could not proceed.

Now, the new NSW government has decided to cut its losses and run away from Cobbora. The mine will not go ahead, but as part of a complicated transaction with Origin Energy, involving the purchase of the massive 2,880MW Eraring coal generator for a token price of $50 million (the trading rights to the output had already been sold), Origin will be paid $300 million by the NSW government (and taxpayers) as compensation for not getting the cheap coal.

As Deutsche Bank analysts wrote in a research note, the deal with Cobbora envisaged a “large proportion” of Eraring’s fuel requirements being supplied from the mine from 2015 as existing contracts rolled off.

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Coal is / was subsidized in NSW.