4 May 2021
EnergyAustralia has committed to building a 300MW fast-start gas generator in NSW that will combine “green hydrogen” with gas and help fill the market opportunities created by the retirement of the Liddell coal generator.
The $400 million Tallawarra B project has landed funding support from both the NSW state government (up to $78 million) and the federal government (up to $5 million), which are said to be conditional on the hydrogen component being delivered.
The new gas generator will be on line by the summer of 2023/24, after the closure earlier that year of the last of the Liddell coal units, and raises questions about whether the federal government’s Snowy Hydro utility will continue with its own plans for a gas generator at Kurri Kurri, or whether it will opt for a smaller facility.
3 May 2021
Gas customers in the ACT face higher bills in the next five years after the energy regulator allowed a network request to extract more money from its customers before many of them switch to alternative technologies such as renewables.
EvoEnergy, which owns and operates the distributed gas network and supplies more than 150,000 customers in the ACT and neighbouring Queanbeyan in NSW, has won regulatory approval to accelerate the depreciation on its gas network, and pass on the cost to consumers.
It wants to do this because it expects many of its consumers to stop using gas, partly because of cheaper alternatives and partly because of a new ACT government mandate to reach zero emissions by 2045, which means no use of a fossil fuel such as gas.
3 May 2021
Over the weekend, the state of Victoria announced a collection of new climate targets. They’re relatively straightforward. The state’s leadership has already cut the state’s emissions by 24.8% up to the end of 2019 (compared to 2005 levels), and is promising to further cut emissions by 28-33 percent by 2025 and 45-50 percent by 2030.
It has drawn a mixed range of responses. Business groups welcomed it, hailing it as “sensible”, while environment groups have challenged it, criticising it as insufficient.
It is worth diving briefly into why this argument exists, and what it means for the key stakeholders of the climate change problem (that is, anyone living on the surface of planet Earth).
30 April 2021
This is a lightly edited transcript of the Giles Parkinson and David Leitch interview with Energy Security Board chair Kerry Scott: You can listen to the interview here on the Energy Insiders podcast.
Giles Parkinson 00:00
Kerry Schott 00:05
Giles Parkinson 00:08
I’ve got two quick questions before I hand over to David. The first one is that you’ve said in the media release that it’s really important to get this new design or market rules right. Given that the pace of transition is accelerating, as underlined quite clearly by the paper, and given that the competing interests of customers, and utilities, and incumbents, and new players in the market, and state governments, and of course, the federal government, how hard has it been?