Similar to the shock announcement of the early closure of Victoria\u2019s Hazelwood Power Station in 2016, Origin Energy is aiming to close it\u2019s Eraring coal power station in NSW\u2019s Hunter Valley seven years early, by August 2025. Eraring is Australia\u2019s largest coal power station (in terms of its capacity). It emits over 11 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually – around 8 percent of the state\u2019s total.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr Madeline Taylor, Climate Councillor, Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University, School of Law and energy expert said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCoal is not a commercially viable industry any longer. Just like AGL last week, this is a commercial decision made by Origin Energy to close its Eraring coal power station seven years early.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSome of Australia\u2019s biggest power companies are not able to compete from a price perspective and policy perspective, as the states and territories cash-in on a net zero future, bringing with it cheaper renewable power, economic investments and new clean jobs. The newly announced Hunter-Central Coast Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) is set to provide 100 Terawatt hours of power by the mid 2020s, which is almost double the generation of NSW\u2019s entire coal fleet. The new Hunter REZ is just one of the state’s four proposed REZs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCoal is not going to cut it anymore when we have cheap and reliable renewable energy and storage that\u2019s already powering over a third of Australia\u2019s largest electricity grid and providing almost 25 percent of NSW\u2019s power.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cStates and territories are investing in storage technologies and that needs to continue. It\u2019s increased storage that we need, not more investment in expensive electricity generation stemming from gas, which our carbon budget cannot afford and may leave us with stranded assets.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Similar to the shock announcement of the early closure of Victoria\u2019s Hazelwood Power Station in 2016, Origin Energy is aiming to close it\u2019s Eraring coal power station in NSW\u2019s Hunter Valley seven years early, by August 2025. Eraring is Australia\u2019s largest coal power station (in terms of its capacity). It emits over 11 million tonnes … Continue reading “Energy expert responds to Origin coal closure announcement”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14948"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14949,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14948\/revisions\/14949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}