WA Libs fill Labor’s energy policy void with a coal exit and green hydrogen
Boiling Cold
WA Opposition leader Zak Kirkup wants to replace State-owned coal-fired power from Collie with wind and solar from the Mid-West by 2025 in a surprise move that has left Labor as the clean energy laggards in WA.
Kirkup’s energy plan announced last week also offers infrastructure support for a green hydrogen industry north of Geraldton and pledges net-zero emissions from the State Government by 2030.
Labor Energy Minister Bill Johnston has gone out of his way for two years to avoid being realistic about the future of Collie coal or supporting Mid-West wind farms.
Johnston was warned early on that growing installation of rooftop solar generating surges of power in the middle of the day combined with inflexible coal-fired power could make the South West power grid unstable as soon as 2022.
In response, Johnston launched an energy transformation taskforce in May 2019 that has won plaudits from industry for quickly completing two complex tasks.
New market rules have opened up access to the grid and improved management of services required to keep supply stable. The taskforce also produced a plan to better integrated distributed energy sources such as rooftop solar, batteries and electric vehicles into the system.
Johnston delivered these critical, complex and difficult reforms. It was low profile work many politicians would ignore, hoping no problems popped up before the next election.
However, the taskforce’s third deliverable, a Whole of System Plan for the South West grid to support better investment and regulatory decisions, was hobbled from the start.
A plan planned to fail
The 20-year plan ignored the near-certainty of some form of cost for carbon emissions, and the analysis only sought lower price and higher reliability but not lower emissions.
These omissions were despite emissions reduction being one of the five overarching objectives in the taskforce’s terms of reference. A few months after the taskforce was launched the McGowan government said it would work towards net-zero emissions by 2050.
With Collie’s three power stations all among the State’s top 10 producers of greenhouse gases, the plan was an opportunity to identify real action to achieve the Government’s stated goals.
But it seems the intent was not to identify any action at all.
When Johnston launched the plan in October 2020, he told Boiling Cold that the exclusion of a carbon price from the plan was “a political question.”
“If the Federal Government set a price on carbon then it would be very easy to adjust the modelling,” Johnston said.
By Johnston’s logic homeowners in the North West would only consider a cyclone-proof design when the wind picked up.
The State Government has chosen not to factor in a future carbon price in its investment decisions, contrary to the practice of every large resource company in WA.
Anyone relying on the Whole of System Plan to inform investment decisions would be betting on a fantastical future without climate change.
Two other features of the plan unrealistically favoured coal.
Source: reneweconomy
