Australia has just lost its best energy minister, lets hope Labor doesn’t trash his legacy

The Coalition has been swept from power in its last government holdout on the mainland. This may not be a common belief, but the Coalition’s loss of power in NSW, and specifically the loss Matt Kean as minister for energy, is a potential disaster for Australia’s energy transition, although it does not need to be.

The Coalition in Australia is normally known for its climate denial and for being technology troglodytes – think of the campaigns against wind and solar, big batteries and electric vehicles, and even the very idea of energy efficiency and demand management.

Kean broke that mold. He embraced the future, and managed to cross the ideological divide within the Coalition to put into place one the most ambitious clean energy transition plans in the world – switching the country’s biggest and least reliable coal fleet to a grid dominated by wind, solar and storage, all within a decade.

That plan is now well underway. Five renewable energy zones have been created, the results of the first of around 20 tenders for new generation and storage capacity will be announced soon, the Waratah super battery – the biggest of its type in the world – is being built, and tenders held for more big batteries.

Not everyone has been happy about the design of this renewable infrastructure roadmap, and the fact that it amounts to central control. But it’s probably the most comprehensive vision outside of the Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan, and has now been adopted as a de-facto national model.

And Kean has to take the credit for that, because it was his vision, his political skills, and his ability to actually “do something” that made it a reality.

What happens now, however, is not clear. Labor has been sending mixed signals on its climate and energy position, and the expected new energy minister, Jihad Dib, has the most wonderful story to tell about his role as a principal and mentor in disadvantaged schools, but what does he know about the energy transition?

What we do know from the new premier Chris Minns has been unsettling as the state and the market operator look to manage the closure of the last Liddell coal generator units next month, and the country’s biggest coal generator, the 2.88GW Eraring facility, in late 2025.

The market still believes there is a chance that Eraring will stay open a little longer, possibly one or two units to get through the 2025/26 summer. But Minns has been talking of something different – of buying out the coal generation giant and running it as a state asset, and running it longer.

It’s not clear if Minns and his advisors have thought this through. There’s a big question about what the state would have to do in terms of absorbing the ongoing rehabilitation and remediation liabilities of Eraring. And if Eraring is extended, then what does that do to motivate the investment in new wind, solar and storage?

It may be that Labor simply strikes a similar deal to the one Victoria struck with EnergyAustralia over the Yallourn brown coal facility. Minns is also talking about a state-run energy corporation, but it is not clear what it will actually do, other than act like some sort of state-based Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

The rhetoric of Labor on election night was hardly comforting. “We are hitting a cliff, we can’t have the lights go off,” said environment spokesman and likely minister Penny Sharpe, who confirmed that Labor is looking to extend the life of Eraring.

“We pretty annoyed by it … coming off line too early,” she said on ABC TV. “We need industry to keep going.”

That’s exactly the sort of rhetoric you hear from the fossil fuel lobby, and groups like the Mineral Council of Australia will be delighted in the result. The oil and gas industry say they are very pleased, and look forward to more gas project approvals, over and above the already approved Narrabri carbon bomb.

The MCA ran a nasty little campaign against Kean in his seat, which shows just how unhappy they were with his clean energy vision, and just how hard they will work to stop any policy outcomes that come close to a 1.5°C outcome.

Which means that their children, and our children will be up the creek, but without the paddle offered as a last resort by the UN-based IPCC last week. Will Labor rise above the union and the fossil fuel lobby noise? We’d like to hope so, but we fear not.

And what of Kean? He was dignified and intelligent in defeat on ABC TV on Saturday, but late on Sunday afternoon announced he would not run for leader of the NSW Liberal Party after Dominic Perrottet’s resignation, so he can spend time with his family.

That will no doubt spark speculation that he could make a run for federal politics. But the hounds are already baying. The MCA is out to get him, and so are some of the federal Coalition fossil reactionaries. Barnaby Joyce led the attacks on Kean on Sunday, and it is likely more could follow.

The NSW Coalition may just end up lurching to the right, just as it showed that a conservative government could get it more or less correct on climate and energy, and breach the bipartisan divide. That prospect, however, was just way too scary an idea for the climate criminals.

Note: This story has been updated to reflect Kean’s announcement that he will not run for leadership of NSW Liberal Party.

See also: Never mind Eraring, the Liddell coal closure in April is the one to watch