Coal or nothing will be the reality for the next 15 years as Chris Bowen blindsides Australians with renewables 'cheque in the mail' promise

Australia's lastest energy data shows the nation is heavily dependent on coal-fired electricity generation - and it serves as a major reality check for Labor and their wind and solar agenda, writes Nick Cater.

The renewable energy confidence trick is unravelling faster than Chris Bowen probably anticipated.

The Energy Minister’s promise of a smoother and faster transition to low-carbon electricity has proved as un-bankable as the $275 cut to annual household electricity bills we were told we’d be enjoying about now.

The Australian Energy Market Operator’s latest data reveals the dependence on coal in the June quarter was greater than the corresponding period in 2022 when Labor came to power.

This is despite the closure of the 2GW Liddell Power Station in the Hunter Valley in April 2023 which was supposed to be sign of the irresistible progress towards renewable energy

Yet retiring coal generation is largely being replaced by coal as remaining plants are pushed to their limits to make up for the shortfall of electricity on the East Coast Grid.

The amount of wind power in the grid was nine per cent lower in the June quarter this year than in the same period in 2022.

Wind turbines were becalmed for 75 per cent of the time forcing AEMO to push the interconnector from coal-rich Queensland to NSW to its limits.

The road map which AEMO presented to Bowen in 2022 envisaged that 60 per cent of coal-fired electricity generation would be phased out by the end of the decade, putting the minister on course to meet his heroic target of 82 per cent carbon-free electricity

Clearly that cannot happen without a chronic shortfall of electricity and widespread blackouts.

The speed of the renewable energy rollout has become “sluggish, slow and anaemic”, global analysts BloombergNEF reported this week.

Investment in grid scale solar and wind has slowed to a trickle. The demand for new rooftop solar is slowing too, suggesting that it may have reached its peak.

All of which puts the Federal Government in a something of a quandary.

The amount of grid-scale wind and solar in the system needs to increase by 160 per cent by 2030 to meet the government’s target.

The total number of rooftop solar panels must increase by 70 per cent.

At the current rate of installation, these are fantasy targets.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen insists there are hundreds of new projects “in the pipeline”, renewable-speak for the cheque is in the mail.

Only a handful are reaching the commissioning stage and higher interest rates have made the task of financing the projects much harder.

Rural communities are becoming more organised in opposing wind, solar and transmission line proposals.

The contest is still stacked heavily in the renewable energy industry’s favour, particularly in Queensland with its lax planning laws.

Yet social licence, as the industry euphemistically calls it, is becoming march harder to obtain.

As in Europe, the renewable dream is colliding with the reality that intermittent, weather-dependent energy sources cannot replace reliable base load power.

No amount of batteries would have been able to compensate for the extended period of low winds in the late Autumn and early winter in Australia.

Pumped hydro has turned out to be more difficult to construct and far more expensive than the renewable optimists pretended.

Nuclear power is well over a decade away, even supposing the election of a Coalition government at the next election.

Gas may provide some relief, but the inescapable conclusion is that for next decade and a half at least Australia will be relying on coal.

That will be hard to swallow for Labor state governments who have played to anti-fossil fuel sentiment with wild uncosted and unfeasible targets for the swift retirement of coal.

To their credit, however, they are making pragmatic deals to keep coal-fired power stations running for as long as possible.

A deal with AGL to keep the Loy Yang power station operating until at least 2035 was on of Dan Andrew’s final acts as Premier.

In NSW, Premier Chris Minns has struck a deal to keep Eraring running beyond its planned closure next year.

Last month we discovered just how crucial Eraring’s extension will be.

Eraring’s operator, Origin Energy, revealed that its output hit a five-year high in the last year rising by 2.1 TWh to 14.3 TWh, 8 per cent of total demand in the National Electricity Market.

It was running close to capacity with output available for 90 per cent of the time.

Eraring’s performance should ring alarm bells, however.

It indicates that there is next to no spare capacity in the grid, making its reliability hostage to fortune.

The unexpected failure of a single generator at a critical time would be a disaster, yet as ageing machinery is pushed harder that possibility rises.

On top of that, AEMO forecasts the demand for electricity will rise by 16 per cent to 202 TWh by 2030 and increase by half as much again to 313 TWh by 2050.

The construction of a new coal-fired power plant and refitting existing generators to extend their life would be a prudent investment right now, with or without nuclear.

That is unlikely to happen if we continue to allow engineering logic to be trumped by ideology and vested interests.

Nick Cater is a senior fellow at the Menzies Research Centre

.Coal or nothing will be the reality for the next 15 years as Chris Bowen blindsides Australians with renewables ‘cheque in the mail’ promise | Sky News Australia