Clean coal subsidies won’t stop exit: Origin
Origin, Australia’s biggest electricity retailer, rejects calls for government to support development of clean coal technologies.
Australia’s biggest electricity and gas retailer Origin Energy has rejected calls for the government to support the development of clean coal technologies, and said subsidies or tax breaks would not reverse its commitment to exit coal by 2032.
Origin Energy chief executive Frank Calabria said the company would exit coal-fired generation and that policy should focus on ensuring there was a smooth transition to more renewable energy, batteries and gas-fired power.
“Subsidies for new technologies are not the way to go,” Mr Calabria said. “We need to get out of coal and that remains our commitment, to do that.”
Origin owns the country’s biggest coal-fired power station — Eraring on the shores of Lake Macquarie, north of Sydney, and said it increased generation output by one-third in the six months to the end of December to take advantage of high prices.
Origin has committed to close Eraring by 2032, adding to a succession of ageing coal-fired plants that have already closed such as the Hazelwood, Northern and Playford stations, or are due to retire shortly, including AGL Energy’s Liddell plant.
The comments come in response to the head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, calling for Australia to follow the US lead and provide tax subsidies for carbon-capture technology.
In an exclusive report in The Australian today the peak international energy body endorsed the Turnbull government’s National Energy Guarantee as a “promising” model to ensure reliability and affordability while helping to meet targets set out in the Paris climate change agreement.
Mr Birol said the government needed to start providing tax incentives to fund carbon capture and storage projects as coal would remain an important part of Australia’s energy mix well into the future.
The federal government has introduced legislation to allow the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation to fund CCS projects, citing the US budget bill to extend generous tax incentives to CCS, but it is opposed by Labor and the Greens.
Mr Calabria has backed the National Energy Guarantee as well as the Paris climate commitments and said the company would bring 1.1 gigawatts of new renewable energy to market by 2020, including 300M of wind generation due to come on line by the middle of the year.
He said policies should focus on solving for emissions and reducing costs. “I don’t think subsidies are the right way to go.”
