Australia’s wholesale power prices double in a year as coal-fired power plants falter

Power lines near the Liddell power station in NSW. Australian wholesale electricity prices more than doubled in the first three months of 2022 from a year ago. Photograph: Mark Baker/AP

Wholesale power prices in Australia’s main electricity market continued to rise in the first three months of 2022, more than doubling the cost a year earlier, with the increase blamed mostly on more costly fossil fuels and the falling reliability of coal-fired power plants.

Renewable energy, meanwhile, grew its share of the market to more than one-third, pushing carbon emissions from the largest polluting sector to new lows, according to the quarterly energy dynamics report from the Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo).