Media

Roughly $1 billion is being invested in what’s been called the Solar SunShot program — a solar manufacturing hub in New South Wales’ Hunter region, to be built on the site of the former coal-fired Liddell Power Station. Tim Buckley told ABC Radio that we need to transform the hunter valley and its workforce. Australia has abundant natural resources and capital to transform our economy and grid by using Australia-made solar panels instead of expensive imported diesel fuel from the Middle East. Read more

Tim Buckley articulates a concern about the sizable subsidies provided by the NSW government to Origin Energy (ORG), owner of Australia’s largest coal-fired power plant. Tim refers to a pattern established over a decade ago when Origin was awarded $75 million by the government and notes that the company has since made lucrative returns, even reaching pre-tax cash flows of $1 billion over the past three years. He highlights Origin’s negotiations for a further funding increase to keep the power plant operational. According to Tim, sustaining the plant is non-essential. He emphasises Amazon’s analysis outlying an adequately reliable grid without Origin’s operations. Tim urges the NSW government to avoid giving further multi-million dollar subsidies to Origin Energy. Read more

Extending the operation of Eraring power station beyond its planned closure in 2025 would cost NSW taxpayers between $120million-$150million a year, a report has estimated. The independent think tank Climate Energy Finance (CEF) report recommends the phased closure of the plant over 2025 with complete closure by the end of first quarter 2026. Read more

A delay in the closure of the massive Eraring coal fired power station in NSW could cost up to $150 million a year in taxpayer funds, and would be “unconscionable” given the massive handouts and windfalls enjoyed by its owner Origin Energy, according to a new report. The 2.88 gigawatt (GW) Eraring power plant – the biggest in the country – is slated for complete closure in August 2025, but the NSW government is worried the state will be at risk of blackouts or price hikes if it does actually close at that time. The new analysis from Climate Energy Finance says there will be no reliability gap, and the costs of keeping the plant open will equate to more than six times what NSW has spent in the past four years electrifying and solarising social housing. Read more

New South Wales may end up paying $150m a year to subsidise the extension of Australia’s biggest coal-fired power plant, money better spent accelerating the take-up of rooftop solar with storage, the energy analyst Tim Buckley has said. Read more

For Climate Energy Finance’s latest report on Eraring we reviewed available data to estimate that to keep all four generation units of Eraring open beyond 2025, NSW electricity users would bear the brunt of yet another coal subsidy of a minimum $120-150 million (USD 78.3-97.99 million) annually. NSW consumers are already funding Origin an estimated $468 million, since the government introduced measures in December 2022 to cap the price generators would pay for coal, a response to fossil fuel hyperinflation resulting from sanctions on Russian exports after its invasion of Ukraine. This represents nearly half-a-billion dollars of public money already sunk into the energy giant. Read more

NSW taxpayers could be on the hook for as much as $150 million a year for every year the Eraring coal-fired power plant remains open, energy analysts predict, with the Minns government refusing to detail the terms of its negotiations with owner Origin Energy ahead of a likely extension beyond 2025. Read more

In Canberra Times via AAP and syndicated to 100+ mastheads: Origin Energy has been in talks with the state government to extend the life of its Eraring plant, located south of Newcastle, after a review warned the scheduled 2025 closure would result in electricity shortfalls and price hikes. NSW officials are yet to confirm how long the plant’s life could be extended or how much it will cost. But analysis by independent think-tank Climate Energy Finance, released on Thursday, found keeping the plant open past 2025 could cost between $120 million and $150 million per year, paid to Origin to subsidise the extension. Read more

Extending the lifespan of NSW’s largest coal-fired power station would cost taxpayers between $120m-$150m a year, a report from a renewable energy think tank has concluded. Read more

Longi founder Li Zhenguo is laying off thousands of staff in an industry grappling with oversupply The solar industry is cyclical, resulting in periods of boom and bust. Analysts have warned that massive job cuts across the industry are inevitable after several years of excessive focus on output rather than on sustainable profits. Xuyang Dong of Climate Energy Finance, an Australian think-tank, noted that at of the start of this year, China had more than 1,000GW of solar module production capacity in development for domestic and international markets, a far higher amount than current domestic demand. China needs around 280-320GW of new solar capacity a year until 2030 to reach its dual carbon targets. “The amount of money saved by laying off staff is insufficient compared to the 40-50 per cent decline in prices in the market over the last 12 months,” she said. Read more

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has issued what is becoming a routine annual warning of potential future gas supply shortages in Australia, with the release this week of its latest Gas Statement of Opportunities (GSOO). Tim Buckley, the founder and director of Climate Energy Finance said “Why does AEMO have gas use in the power system actually higher in 2040 than they do today? “That’s the gas industry giving the most optimistic view that they can about the future of their industry, and it’s just not going to happen. “AEMO is still failing to understand the massive structural shift of scale and scope for batteries – including of utility scale, behind the meter and in electric vehicles for V2G, plus grid orchestration – to permanently diminish the need for gas peakers, which play a small, critical but diminishing role in grid firming, particularly in season peaks in winter. “We have AEMO doing a gas statement of opportunity that ignores the obvious opportunity, which is to electrify everything and reduce demand.” Read more

Opinion piece from energy leader Danny Kennedy from New Energy Nexus on the opportunity for Australia for invest onshore in battery processing. “Time and again we are faced with this frustrating lack of both vision and understanding of the context, scale and urgency of the task before us. Australia produces over half of the world’s lithium yet retains less than 1% of the profit that lithium eventually delivers in final products of batteries and EVs. Why not invest in manufacturing batteries onshore? It’s a sector ripe for scaling, something we’re told time and again that we can’t do. Why?” Read more