Rod Campbell

Up in the Sunshine State, the new-ish LNP Government has proposed a new “Energy Roadmap” that boils down to more-coal-for-longer.

There’s a state parliamentary inquiry into the Energy Roadmap that has just published submissions, including ours at The Australia Institute. Our key points:

  • The proposed Energy Roadmap could increase Queensland’s emissions by 310 million tonnes to 2050, almost a years’ worth of Australia’s national emissions.
  • If emissions increase by 310 mt in the electricity sector, then emissions have to decrease by 310 mt somewhere else under a net zero policy. This additional abatement cost in other sectors could reach $98 billion. It is far cheaper to abate emissions in the electricity sector.
  • The proposal to spend $1.6 billion on maintaining coal and gas-fired generators sounds controversial, but is actually just business as usual for Queensland and is probably an underestimate of what is required as the power stations age. This money should be redirected to renewable energy.

Browsing through other submissions, there’s not a lot of support for this energy policy trainwreck. Most submissions oppose it, including the Mining and Energy Union:

While we are pleased to see the indicative closure schedule for Queensland’s state-owned coal power stations reset to technical lifespans, we are deeply concerned by the lack of certainty offered by the Roadmap, which will make it near impossible for workers and communities to plan for their futures.

Though the Roadmap extends the timelines, the overarching trajectory for coal-fired power in Australia is towards closure, and the Roadmap does little to create certainty for the coal power sector and its workers.

There are currently no credible proposals for new coal-fired power generation and, indeed, the Roadmap does not propose the construction of new coal-fired generation capacity.

In this context, we find that the Roadmap is subjective, opaque, vague, and non-committal with regard to the new closure dates for state-owned coal power stations.”