It’s a measure of how irrelevant Angus Taylor and the federal government now are on energy policy that major decisions by fossil fuel energy companies are being made with Taylor not merely not consulted, but kept completely in the dark.
In a humiliating admission yesterday, Taylor — notionally minister for energy — confessed Origin Energy had decided to bring forward the closure of Australia’s largest coal-fired power plant, at Eraring in the Hunter Valley, to 2025 while keeping it secret from him.
NSW Treasurer and Energy Minister Matt Kean had known for months and been preparing. Taylor was left to fulminate from the sidelines. But that’s where he and Morrison have exiled themselves to by refusing to have an energy or climate policy.
Taylor’s only interest is in working to prop up coal-fired power. But even coal-fired power owners don’t want his help.
Origin — and its coal-fired power generation rival, AGL — both criticised Taylor’s absurd “Coalkeeper” proposal last year, under which every household would be taxed up to $400 a year to pay fossil fuel-burning power stations to continue operating even when no one uses their power. The states killed off the idea the first chance they got.
Now Origin refuses to even keep Taylor informed of what it’s doing — instead talking to a minister who is actively engaged in the process of managing the accelerating phasing out of coal from our electricity grid.
The end of coal-fired power is coming much faster than Morrison, Taylor and their denialist colleagues in the federal Nationals suspect, and the owners of those assets want out. AGL is shifting its dirty assets into a new company, having brought forward their closure dates last week. Origin is simply closing them.
It’s hard to recall a minister who has so thoroughly sidelined himself as Taylor has from where the policy work is in his portfolio.
Meanwhile, the NSW government will be aware that the closure of Eraring won’t just be important for NSW’s energy supply and carbon emissions.
Absent from most reporting of coal-fired power production in Australia is how deadly it is. Coal-fired power kills huge numbers of people through its particulate emissions. A 2021 study found that Europe’s 200-plus fleet of coal-fired power stations inflict at least 34,000 deaths annually.
A 2018 NSW study found that NSW’s coal-fired power stations inflict at least 228 deaths a year, along with hundreds of incidents of low birth weight and diabetes — primarily in Sydney. The study attributed 87 deaths per year to Eraring, totalling 815 years of life lost (mortality is mostly among seniors).
Origin bringing forward the closure of Eraring by seven years is likely to save around 600 lives and over 5600 years of life.
We’ll never know who those people are, nor will they, but for older Australians in places like the Hunter Valley and Sydney, the end of coal-fired power can’t come soon enough.
