Hazelwood closure: Brisbane entrepreneur considers buying plant...

Hazelwood closure: Brisbane entrepreneur considers buying plant

ANTHONY GALLOWAY, Herald Sun
November 4, 2016 3:07pm
Subscriber only

THE people of the Latrobe Valley have been thrown a potential lifeline with a Brisbane-based entrepreneur considering buying the Hazelwood power plant.
Trevor St Baker, an energy consultant and founder of specialist electricity retailer ERM Power, said he had registered his interest with Hazelwood’s majority French owner Engie to purchase the plant.
It comes after Mr St Baker, along with coal mining executive Brian Flannery, last year bought the Vales Point coal fired power station from the NSW Government for just $1 million.
Engie on Thursday announced it would close Hazelwood power station in March, with 750 jobs to be axed.
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But Mr St Baker said the closure of the plant would send power prices soaring and jobs would be lost across Victoria including at Alcoa’s Portland smelter.

Trevor St Baker. Photo Mark Cranitch
“The idea of taking 25 per cent of generation out of Victoria and relying ancillary services and intermittent renewables, and thinking power prices won’t go up is just ridiculous,” Mr St Baker told the Herald Sun.
“We have been looking over the fence to see what’s going on and have decided after yesterday’s decision that we are a party that is interested.
“We may have until March next year to work through whether it is a viable case. It has to do with saving the power station and other energy intensive businesses in Australia.
“We have registered our interest with Engie but it may be that the State Government has a role to play.”
Mr St Baker said his company, Sunset Power, would look at the prospect of Hazelwood staying open providing a baseload capability to the energy grid.
He said he would prefer to complete any purchase of Hazelwood before it was shut down by Engie as reopening the plan would be more costly.
“We certainly must build a business case, whether that’s to keep some of the generators operating or all of them,” he said.

A Brisbane-based entrepreneur considering buying the Hazelwood power plant. Picture: AAP
Mr St Baker is also considering purchasing the shuttered Northern power station in South Australia.
Committee for Gippsland chief executive Mary Aldred welcomed Mr St Baker’s comments but cautioned the region did not want false hope.
“That really would be something for them to put to the owners Engie. You would imagine there would be regulatory and statutory involvement and decisions at a state level if that were to go anywhere,” she said.
Visiting the Latrobe Valley today, Premier Daniel Andrews said there was still a future for coal in Victoria even though it would be theoretically nice to flick a switch and have a different energy mix in Victoria.
He said the government’s support package, totalling $266 million, would go a long way to finding the workers new jobs and encouraging businesses to move to the region.
The package, includes $174 million for job-creating road and rail projects and a radical “economic growth zone” offering tax breaks for businesses moving to Latrobe City, Wellington Shire or Baw Baw Shire.
“This is unprecedented. By volume, the amount of money, this is the biggest package in terms of regional development any Victorian government has ever invested following years of disadvantage and big industry changes,” Mr Andrews said.
“We need a range of different jobs, not just to try to make up for the ones we lost at Hazelwood but to deal with the chronic unemployment that has bedevilled this community for a very long time.”
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