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The Demise of Coal | Energy Networks Australia

chadmin 18/07/2019

7–9 minutes

The Australian electricity system was founded on centralised, carbon-intensive coal-fired generation. The average lifetime of a coal powered plant is 29 years although its design life is 40 to 50 years. About three-quarters of Australia’s coal-fired power stations are operating beyond their original design life and some have had extensive refits [1].

Age is the major factor leading to coal plant closure. These old generators are inefficient and carbon intensive. Since 2016, 2.8 GW of coal capacity has retired including Victoria’s Hazelwood Power Station, decommissioned in 2017 because it was not economically viable and had reached the end of its productive life.

As with any old asset, reliability is declining. Earlier this year, AGL’s generator at Loy Yang A brown coal-fired power station unexpectedly tripped offline. It is also expected that Yallourn power station could close much sooner than its scheduled 2032 retirement. To add further pressure, Origin’s Mortlake gas power generator was damaged earlier this month and will run at half-capacity until December 2019. All this has led to 2,133 MW of thermal power now being offline [2].

According to Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO’s) Integrated System Plan (ISP), it is expected that 14 GW of coal-fired generation will reach the end of its technical life and retire by 2040, as shown in Figure 1. Those retiring currently generate 70 TWh, which is equivalent to one-third of current total National Electricity Market (NEM) consumption [3].

Figure 1: NEM coal-fired generation fleet operating life to 2040, by 50th year from full operation or announced retirement

Source: AEMO’s Integrated System Plan

Tell me how many Coal plants has Bowen closed from the 2018 AEMO ISP
Plan? NONE, NIL & ZILCH.
Who has closed them? The LNP by refusing to upgrade them or further subsidies them.

So where has been this mad rush into renewables? From the LNP.
So why didnt Abbott, Turnball or Morrison put Nukes on the table then?
It was too costly then and its too costly now.
Dutton wants an excuse to keep them open and subsidised by using the threat of Nukes.