Victoria deserves praise for promising a rapid shift from coal to renewables. Now comes the hard part

The Andrews government’s plans to transform Victoria’s energy sector would create one of the fastest transitions from a high-pollution power grid to a near zero-emissions system anywhere in the world. Photograph: Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images

Transformations don’t come much bigger than that proposed in Victoria by Daniel Andrews last week.

At the time of typing, about two-thirds of the electricity generated in Victoria comes from burning brown coal – basically mud – in old, sometimes failing, generators in the Latrobe Valley. It is the most polluting form of large-scale power generation.