Federal energy minister Angus Taylor appeared to be genuinely miffed that no one gave him advanced notice of one of the landmark events of Australia’s rapidly accelerating clean energy transition – the early closure of Australia’s biggest coal generator at Eraring.
Origin Energy, the owner of the massive 2,880MW facility that will now close in 2025, seven years earlier than previously advised, didn’t tell Taylor, and neither did the NSW Coalition government, which had been discussing the issue with Origin for several months. The Australian Energy Market Operator, which was also consulted on planning, also did not share the news.
Taylor reckons he was only told on Wednesday night, just before the early Thursday announcement. And that, sadly enough for a country that should be seeking to lead the world in the transition to renewables, shouldn’t be any surprise.
As ABC presenter Patricia Karvelas suggested to Taylor on Friday morning on Radio National, the federal energy minister is not trusted by the industry. He has a formidable mind, apparently, but one nearly completely blinkered by ideology and his own technology preferences.
The reason Taylor was excluded, in the words of one close observer, was the fear that he would seek to “weaponise” the news, and in just the way he sought to do when he did find out.
As we have lamented on many occasions, Taylor – an avid and active anti-wind campaigner before he entered parliament – has offered nothing since his appointment more than three years ago, apart from erecting the equivalent of policy bollards smack bang in the middle of the green energy transition.
Taylor complained repeatedly there was “too much” wind and solar in the system, but his efforts to deliver the new dispatchable capacity he insisted was so desperately needed have basically come to nought.
His Underwriting New Generation Investment Program has delivered nothing, as was confirmed by his department this week and, worse, it has discouraged other private investment from moving ahead. That dammed bollard.
Taylor has advanced Snowy 2.0 – and is attached to the project because of the links of his maternal grandfather, who was chief engineer of the original Snowy scheme – but that project was set in train by Malcolm Turnbull. And many question whether it is value for money, in any case.
Taylor has jumped in, boots and all, into the Kurri Kurri gas generator, one of the most widely ridiculed projects in the country, not least because it will struggle to secure enough gas to generate for much longer than the big batteries that Taylor and his PM like to mock.
The effective exclusion of the country’s energy minister from one of the most significant announcements in the country highlights once again that – despite or even because of the Coalition’s bluff and bluster, its insistence on a “gas led recovery”, its funding of useless coal project studies, and its relentless demonisation of renewables, big batteries and electric vehicles – the federal government has sidelined itself.
The industry has worked together, and with AEMO, to produce a coherent and admirable blueprint for the transition, the Integrated System Plan that Taylor and the Coalition have virtually ignored.
The industries, and the states, recognise the need to act urgently, not just for environmental reasons, but to keep up with the dramatic change in technologies and to seize the economic opportunities that go with it. They are working out a way to go around Taylor’s bollards.
States have been setting their own paths. NSW is the most notable, because the energy minister Matt Kean basically started from scratch and devised a plan that recognises that all the coal generators in the country’s biggest state grid could close in little more than a decade.
That plan will have its challenges, as David Leitch notes in some detail in this new analysis. It will need to be fast-tracked and important decisions made, soon, on the devilish complexities in creating new renewable energy zones.
But what makes NSW treasurer and energy minister Matt Kean, in particular, different from Taylor and the federal Coalition is that Kean – like most other state ministers – is prepared to give it a go.
NSW has a vision, and is not beholden to legacy industries. It and other states are excited by the opportunities before them to turn their state into renewable and manufacturing superpowers. They have  found purpose to their policies and politics other than spread fear, uncertainty and doubt.
The South Australian Liberal government is much the same. It already had the advantage of coal closures, a large renewable share and a commitment to the world’s biggest battery, but it has embraced this transition and pushed it forward.
It is sometime lost in the mainstream discussion about Australia’s dependence on fossil fuels, but South Australia leads the world in creating a grid that, by the end of this decade, or even within a few years, won’t need to use them much at all. It, too, is setting its sights on becoming a renewable export superpower.
Queensland and Victoria are managing their own transitions from coal to renewables, albeit at varying speeds, while W.A. and Northern Territory, despite the challenges of managing these transitions in isolated grid, both find themselves at the frontier of massive green hydrogen projects – led by the likes of billionaires Andrew Forrest and Mike Cannon-Brookes – that will fundamentally change their economies.
Taylor, meanwhile, is reduced to name calling and petty-point scoring from people who should, in a rational world, be his allies, but who he somehow imagines as his rivals.
“Delusional” he called Kean, when asked if the new 700MW, two-hour “Waratah super battery” planned by the NSW state government could help replace Eraring.
As usual, the federal Coalition doesn’t seem to want to understand what batteries can do. It will not, as Taylor pretended, try to mimic Eraring’s output. It is not limited by two hours storage.
What it can do is stand in the market and release the constraints on transmission lines, allowing more generation to be swapped and imported into the main load centres. In this way, it will act in much the same fashion as the Hornsdale and Victorian Big Battery that preceded it.
If Taylor had chosen to be in less of a funk, and across more of the detail, he would have noted the NSW assessment of its energy security needs, and the role that the battery can play.
It extends far beyond its rated capacity, because its ability to act as a buffer to transmission lines means it can free up more than 930MW of “firm capacity”. That’s more than Taylor’s Kurri Kurri endeavour, and here’s betting that it will be cheaper, cleaner, smarter, faster, more valuable and more profitable.
Just to confirm this, AEMO boss Daniel Westerman told ABC Melbourne on Friday morning: “The battery is about freeing up transmission capacity that allows energy to flow into Sydney. It’s not so much that it is a battery that stores energy, it’s that it frees up capacity to transmit into Sydney to be used at the right time.”
Will this be enough? “With the planned investment that does include the battery announced by NSW, there is sufficient electricity supply to meet demand in NSW when Eraring closes, if it closes in 2025,” Westerman said.
Of course, there is work to do. The “Waratah” battery is so named because it is the state emblem, not because of its location. It doesn’t yet have a location, although the site of the old Munmorah coal generator on the central coast might be one option.
There’s a few ducks to line up to get this built by 2025, along with the renewable energy zones that will be able to unlock some of the 135GW of renewable energy and storate capacity that is jockeying for position on the grid.
Australia will be hoping that, by 2025, it doesn’t just have a couple of new big batteries and some renewable energy zones, but also new leadership at the federal level.
What the fast-tracked closure of Eraring makes clear is that we don’t need bollards and FUD anymore. And if that is all Taylor can offer, then perhaps the best place for him is to go back to addressing the anti-wind farm rallies where his views, reactionary as they were, and his actions were more trusted by the audience.
