In the Northern Territory, at least they had a plan on how to get to 50 per cent renewables by 2030. A very detailed plan put together by some sharp minds. But the Labor government failed to follow it. And last month, the new CLP conservative government ripped it up and decided to go all in on gas.
“It’s madness,” said energy analyst Tom Quinn. “Actually, they probably had no choice,” said Alan Langsworthy, the frustrated lead author of the original renewable blueprint, who had been warning for years that Labor needed to lift its game.
In Queensland, they also had a detailed plan for 50 per cent renewables by 2030, and 80 per cent by 2035. And to its credit, the state Labor government was following it nearly to the letter.
Australia’s most coal dependent state will reach its 2030 target, but now may have buckley’s of reaching the 2035 goal, because the new LNP government, in an act of spite and blind ideology, says it will rip it up.
On the same day, Queensland energy minister David Janetzki announced the state would keep open one of its oldest coal fired generators, at a likely cost of hundreds of millions of dollars – and without telling anyone that one of the units at the same plant had, just three days earlier, exploded and would be out of action for months.
“As someone who implemented a [renewable energy] policy, and then seeing it changing, it’s almost heart-breaking,” former Labor premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told the Smart Energy Conference in Sydney on Thursday.
Palaszczuk, who was was the Labor premier of Queensland from 2015 to 2023, spearheaded the state’s shift from a grid supplied by 90 per cent coal in 2018 to its current mix nearing 30 per cent renewables.
A Climate Council report in September last year named Queensland Labor’s $62 billion Energy and Jobs Plan as one of the largest and most comprehensive renewables investment packages of any Australian state, backed up legislated renewable and emissions reduction targets.
In August 2024, there were 55 large-scale renewable energy projects either operating, under construction or financially committed since 2015. State Labor had also flagged plans to close all publicly owned coal-fired power stations by 2035.
As well as support to keep coal open for longer, the LNP government’s newly outlined five-year plan for energy, which will be finalised at the end of the year, is expected to include the repeal of Labor’s legislated renewable energy targets, and an extension for coal, and more gas plants.
And even though projects currently under construction and commissioning – such as the country’s biggest wind project at MacIntyre, the Clarke Creek project and Rio Tinto’s planned multiple wind, solar and battery projects – will likely lift the state to 50 per cent renewables, it is disturbing for the green energy industry.
“Policy uncertainty is the biggest barrier that remains,” Marija Petkovic, from Energy Synapse, told the conference.
“Industry has done a great job at solving the technical and regulatory [problems], so it’s a pity about policy uncertainty,” Petkovic said, pointing also to the various “coal-keeper” calls made by state governments over the past few years, including Victoria and New South Wales.
“This particularly effects [the development of] long duration energy,” Petkovic said. “If the coal isn’t coming out, it doesn’t make much sense in investing in long duration energy storage.
“[Developers and investors] need to know what is the actual gap in the market and when does it need to be filled. Unless we get this right we are going to struggle to get enough storage in the grid.”
Richie Merzian, the CEO of the Clean Energy Investor Group, says a firm timeline for coal retirement is something the CEIG is pushing for, too, particularly in the wake of the latest power station extensions in Queensland.
“We want to see locked-in coal-fired plant shut-down dates,” Merzian told the panel discussion.
“We actually need a firmed energy strategy to set out what is the actual mix of firmed energy we need to complement the rollout of renewables.
“The [Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan] is what most in the industry work off, but it’s not given the weight of government locking it in.
“In light of the coal power plant extensions we are seeing in various states” he added, “we want everyone singing off the same song sheet.”
The comments come as Australia heads to the polls for a federal election, with plenty at stake for the transition to renewable energy and for action on climate change if a Peter Dutton-led Coalition should win.
The fear is palpable, in light of the recent changes in government in both the Northern Territory and Queensland, that have quickly led to reversing of renewable energy and climate targets and the unpicking of progress away from fossil fuels.
Federal energy minister Chris Bowen downplayed the impact of the Queensland’s LNP decision to rip up the renewable targets, saying the national target – which aims to reach 82 per cent by 2030 – will be decided largely by national schemes, such as the capacity investment scheme.
“I’ve made clear, and this is no surprise, that coal is the most unreliable form of energy, as well as being high, very high emissions, of course, with not a day in the last two years where we haven’t seen a breakdown in energy in a coal fire power station consuming to our energy grid,” Bowen said on the sidelines of the SEC conference.
“That is why we are proceeding with the massive rollout of renewable energy and dispatchable energy supported by storage to ensure that states can make the decisions that they want to make, to move, when appropriate, away from the coal fired power stations and close them as part of an orderly managed transition.”
To underline that point, Nexa Avisory’s Stephanie Bashir notes that the average downtime of Callide B – the generator that the state LNP wants to keep open – has averaged around 12 weeks a year.
The average annual downtime of Callide C was six years, and that’s before the catastrophic failure in 2021 that took one of its units offline for nearly three years, and another of its units for more than a year.
Andrew Blakers, a professor of renewable energy engineering at the Australian National University, says provided there is not a change in federal government in May, the momentum in the transition to solar, wind and storage will be “almost impossible to stop.”
Almost.
“What are the roadblocks? Hostile commonwealth government would be number one, then daylight, then it’s where do you put the new solar farms, wind farms and transmission,” he told the conference.
“You really need a national plan… with all the states signing up to… how it is going to work,” Palaszczuk said.
“That is what I would advocate.”
