Last modified on Thu 6 May 2021 13.31 EDT
The Morrison government will allocate another $58.6m to âgas-fired recoveryâ measures in Tuesdayâs budget and is continuing to hold out the prospect of building a new power plant in the Hunter Valley despite experts questioning the need for it.
The energy minister, Angus Taylor, will confirm on Friday new funding to support gas infrastructure projects, including a short-term loan of up to $32m to support early works for the Golden Beach gas production and storage project in Gippsland in Victoria.
The budget package includes $6.2m to further develop the Wallumbilla gas supply hub in Queensland. The Australian Energy Market Operator first implemented the hub in March 2014 as an exchange for the wholesale trading of natural gas and a single trading location was established in 2017.
The Morrison government has continued to hold out the prospect of Snowy Hydro building a new gas plant at Kurri Kurri to deal with any power generation gap created by Liddell’s exit. The government has identified the gap as 1,000MW.
But a taskforce advising governments about the impact of the Liddell closure did not back Scott Morrison and Angus Taylor’s insistence that 1,000MW of additional dispatchable electricity would be needed to replace the old coal plant. The taskforce listed a range of committed and probable projects that it found would be “more than sufficient” to maintain a high level of power grid reliability as Liddell shut.