Queensland’s bizarre coal-keeper matrix slams the door on renewables, and everyone will pay the price

They sure know how to celebrate a win in Queensland, and there’s been a few big wins in recent weeks: First the Brisbane Lions won the AFL flag, and a week later the Brisbane Broncos snatched a remarkable victory in the NRL grand final, hours after the club’s women’s team had won the NRLW flag.

In the green energy race, however, Queensland is coming stone, motherless last, even if – according to its own treasurer and energy minister – it has the best talent (the wind and solar resources) in the country, if not the world.

It remains, however, the most coal dependent state in the country, and the LNP government has condemned it to stay that way – possibly for decades. And yet the LNP seems to be just as triumphant over winning that wooden spoon as they have been with their sporting glories.

None of this should be a surprise. But the brazenness of the state LNP government and its attack on renewables and its defence of a dying and polluting industry does take the breath away. Again.

The LNP started off by promising to scrap the state renewable energy targets, introduced new planning laws, reneged on several wind farm approvals and “called in” others, promised $1.6 billion to keep coal operating and finally on Friday unveiled its roadmap that – based on its own numbers – shuts the door on renewables.

As we reported on Friday, energy minister and treasurer David Janetzki had tried to paint the picture that the state is still open for business for large scale renewables – a “pragmatic plan … for affordable, reliable and sustainable energy,” he told about 500 energy industry people gathered at Brisbane convention centre on Friday.

But his own speech, and the roadmap document itself, betray his words.

All the new capacity that the LNP says will be built between now and 2030 (6.5 gigawatts) is either already under construction, contracted by Rio Tinto to replace the state’s biggest coal generator at Gladstone, or underwritten by the federal government’s Capacity Investment Scheme.

The LNP’s own numbers indicate that it expects zero – yes zero – other new wind and solar capacity to be built in that time.

And when new wind and solar capacity is built, 4.5 GW in the five years from 2030 out to 2035 according to its own modelling, it will be far away and out of sight, in the state’s north west where the first stage of the Copperstring transmission line will be built and is expected to be complete in 2032.

The scale of the destruction is illustrated by QCC’s Dave Copeman, who notes that the LNP’s roadmap assumes eight gigawatts (GW) less wind capacity over the next decade (to 2035) than Labor’s Queensland Energy Jobs Plan, and a whopping 13 GW less than the Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan.

It also assumes 8 GW less large scale solar than the QEJP, and 5 GW less than the ISP.

“This Energy Roadmap is designed to pander to fossil fuel loving party members and donors, it’s not the sensible plan ordinary Queenslanders need to manage and replace Queensland’s struggling coal-fired power stations,” Copeman says.

“The Treasurer’s savings claims crumble under the slightest bit of scrutiny. Their modelling doesn’t factor in that we have to replace coal at some point, and completely ignores costs associated with burning coal and gas for longer. It’s a nonsensical number designed to hide that this is a plan built on ideology, not economics.”

It will have an impact on all levels of society, and not just in the Sunshine State. In Queensland, it will mean higher wholesale electricity prices, and higher bills, although Janetzki indicated that the government is already scrambling to make payments to reduce the burden on consumers.

“Make no mistake, when coal and gas win, consumers pay,” Smart Energy Council CEO John Grimes says. “This energy roadmap will increase Queensland consumers’ energy bills, and will damage the national capacity to respond to climate change for decades to come.”

It means that the state’s emissions reduction target – 75 per cent cut by 2035 – is all but dead in the water. If you can’t green your grid, you’ve got buckleys of achieving widespread emissions reduction in the rest of the economy. Janetzki is not ready to admit that in public, but the impact is obvious.

It will impact Australia’s ability to meet its newly released 2035 emissions reduction target, and it makes it even more difficult for federal energy and climate minister Chris Bowen to achieve his 82 per cent renewables target. It may require a rethink of the ISP’s main step change scenario.

The appalling irony of this is that Janetzki, and much of the LNP, know that their claims, and their strategy are completely bogus, and contradicted by their very own plans and what’s happening around them.

Let’s look at Rio Tinto and Gladstone, in central Queensland, the heart of the state’s industrial and fossil fuel base, and where Rio operates the giant aluminium smelters and associated refineries, and is the biggest energy consumer in the state.

You’d have to assume Rio Tinto knows a bit about energy – about economics, about engineering, and about costs. And it does. And its assessment is crystal clear – those smelters and refineries have no future beyond the end of the decade if they have to rely on coal.

So Rio has taken a systematic approach and contracted multiple gigawatts of giant wind, solar and battery storage to replace that ageing coal fired power station.

The one interesting piece of Janetzki’s roadmap – support for a gas generator and a grid upgrade around Gladstone – are important pieces of Rio Tinto’s energy puzzle, and it seems pretty clear that it has the clout to bring pressure to bear on the government to support its plans.

Rio Tinto is saying it can make this transition in just a few years – it has signalled the early closure of Gladstone in 2029 and will have the wind, solar and battery projects operating by then.

If that’s the case, then why the hell can the LNP not see that the rest of the state can and should do so as well, if not by 2035 as Labor wanted to do, then at least by 2040.

Look, for example, at what it the LNP is proposing in the state’s north-west. Janetzki talks with some wonder about the prospect of unlocking half a trillion dollars worth of mineral riches in the region between Townsville and Mt Isa.

Is he going to be providing electricity to this vast province of riches with coal, gas or nuclear? Of course not – just like Rio’s massive industrial assets, it will be based largely around wind, solar and battery storage, and some firming capacity, as its own modelling reveals.

Janetzki is so excited about the the prospect that he has even agreed to fund the creation of renewable based micro-grids to support those new mines while the government wrestles with the soaring cost of new transmission for the western half of Copperstring.

And that’s about the last place where the roadmap makes sense. The government has dumped the coal closure timelines announced by Labor – they were to be all gone by 2035, although government ownership would allow the flexibility much envied in NSW and Victoria should the rollout of wind, solar and transmission be too slow.

In its place, Janetzki has outlined a mysterious “matrix”. It appears to show that each of the state’s remaining coal generators, even the ones that regularly explode or fail in the summer heat, are expected to run until the end of their “technical life”, and then some.

Janetzski must know that this is nonsense, both from an engineering and investment basis. He reportedly pushed for firm dates, but the ultra conservative wing of the LNP wouldn’t have a bar of it, and premier David Crisafulli is seen as a fence sitter and would not back his treasurer in the face of the regional right.

“Queensland’s coal power stations are increasingly unreliable as they age. They were offline a staggering 78 times over the last summer period because they keep breaking down,” Copeman says.

“The Government’s announcement of a $400 million renewable energy and gas investment fund is less than we estimate it would cost to extend the life of just one of Queensland’s failing coal power stations by a year.

“The Treasurer’s savings claims crumble under the slightest bit of scrutiny. Their modelling doesn’t factor in that we have to replace coal at some point, and completely ignores costs associated with burning coal and gas for longer. It’s a nonsensical number designed to hide that this is a plan built on ideology, not economics.”

In April, 2023, I had the privilege of attending the last day of operations at the ageing Liddell coal fired power station in the NSW Hunter Valley. How that 50-year-old facility had been kept going by its operators is simply beyond belief.

But they cared for it and they kept it going. It was their workplace for decades, and the centre of their community, and when it finally came time to switch off the last unit – it didn’t want to go and had to be forced out – there were tears all round.

Read: “She didn’t want to go:” Tears and hugs as oldest coal generator shuts down for last time

But as much as they loved that machine, and were proud of their careers, the workers knew that technology was moving on. They wanted a transition plan, and from AGL they got one.

From the LNP all they get told is that coal is the future, from the sort of politicians you would imagine – when the transition from horse-drawn carriages to the first motor cars was occurring – were holding a handful of hay and stuffing it into the petrol tank, and declaring look, it doesn’t work!

At least the people of Queensland have twigged, They are installing and upgrading rooftop solar systems in record numbers, and leading the charge for home batteries – knowing that its the best protection against soaring price and power outages.

And as that grows – and the LNP has left its rooftop solar modelling largely unchanged from the QEJP and the ISP at around 13 GW by 2035 – you will wonder just how these ageing coal plants are going to be able to dance around the solar duck curve.

AEMO, it should be pointed out, has made it very very clear what keeps it up at night, and nervous in the summer heat, is the prospect of large, inflexible, ageing, increasingly unreliable thermal generators failing just when they might be needed most.

Janetzki says that the LNP energy roadmap is about economics, engineering, and consumer needs.

He’s quite right. But it’s not the wholesale embrace of those virtues as he claims, it’s the outright rejection of them, cheered on by the vested interests and conservative media.

The vast majority of the attendees on Friday left crestfallen and disappointed, if not surprised. It’s just so damn tragic that the LNP was never really expected to do anything else. But we will all the price, in one form or another.

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