This is not about coal or renewables. It is about gas.
The Callide B power station in central Queensland will stay open for up to three years longer than its planned closure date and the life of the state’s other coal-fired generators will also be extended under a major policy shift by the Crisafulli government that complicates the national energy transition.
State Energy Minister David Janetzki will on Tuesday announce that Callide B will keep operating beyond 2028 and other state-owned plants will get detailed extensions by the end of the year under a new strategy that delays Queensland’s transition to renewables and will burn fossil fuels for longer.
This shift has the potential to raise market doubts about the viability of phasing away from coal and comes amid wider concerns about the pace and cost of Australia’s transition to renewable energy.
We have already seen this in NSW with repeated extensions of Eraring. And VIC with repeated dodgy deals between old coal and the Communists.
It is particularly ironic for QLD, which has superb renewable assets, and massive reserves of gas, to go this way.
But this is the reality of not having affordable gas for intermittent backup power.
We can bleat all we like about nuclear versus renewables, but until the gas crisis is resolved, it doesn’t matter.
Prices are only going up, and carbon emissions reduction will stall.
This is before we begin importing LNG at the end of this year, which will expose us to much higher gas prices again.
Even the market carnage of the last week hasn’t moved the needle on putative gas import costs.
And the implication for local bills is stark.
Australia is taking the most expensive and least effective route to climate change mitigation.
