Prime Minister Scott Morrison has flatly opposed the bid led by tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes to buy Australia’s biggest energy company AGL and spend A$20 billion switching it to renewables. This includes closing its coal power stations by 2030. As Morrison stated this week:
We need to ensure that our coal-fired generation of electricity runs to its life, because if it doesn’t, electricity prices go up, they don’t go down.
Likewise, AGL has dismissed the plan as “unrealistic”. But are they right? Would closing AGL’s three coal power stations by 2030 push up prices and bring chaos to the National Electricity Market (NEM)?
