EnergyAustralia has warned Australian consumers that blackouts could occur if there was not enough coal-fired generation available. The company’s managing director, Mark Collette, called for state governments to build up coal generation reserves and expressed concerns over the speed of the transition to renewable energy. The Australian Energy Market Operator’s 2024 roadmap predicted that coal-fired power stations across the country could cease operation by 2038, five years ahead of the previous forecast. Collette has urged the federal and state governments to develop policies to support coal power reserves.
According to AEMO’s 2024 Roadmap, 90 percent of the coal-fired power plants in the National Electricity Market will retire before 2035, with a total phase-out to be complete before 2038. The public and private sectors will need to invest heavily in renewable energy sources to keep up with the demand of households and businesses. Specifically, storage capacity needs to expand 20 times by 2050, while grid-scale wind and solar generation needs to rise seven-fold. Rooftop solar and distributed solar capacity must also increase four-fold. Over the course of a generation, more than 10,000 kilometres of new transmission lines will be required to connect renewable sources across the country to the power grid. Total investment costs for all generation, storage, firming, and transmission infrastructure under the plan was estimated at $121 billion (US$81 billion) per year.
The AEMO report predicts that mainland states in the National Electricity Market could experience electricity shortages by 2027 due to the rapid closure of coal generation.Genesis Energy’s CEO, Daniel Westerman warned that Australia urgently needs new projects to go online to ensure the power grid’s reliability over the next decade. Despite these warnings, some Australian states are already struggling to meet power demand and have been issuing notices asking residents to cut back on non-essential electricity usage.