Yallourn power station: Fear of getting lost on way to new energy

EnergyAustralia’s promises of carbon neutrality by 2050 and cleaner energy, threaten to leave behind the company’s workers.

Ashley Schoer, a 34-year veteran of Yallourn, at the Latrobe Valley power station on Wednesday. Picture: Aaron Francis

When Ashley Schoer was told the Yallourn power station would be closing in 2028, four years earlier than scheduled, his employer ­EnergyAustralia offered him no pathway from his job in old ­energy to the company’s new ­energy future.

“We were given FAQs that talked about support during the transition, but it was pretty wishy-washy,” said Mr Schoer, a 34-year veteran of the brown-coal-fired power plant.

“There were no guarantees they would take any of us along with them into this renewable ­energy future they talked about.”

Mr Schoer, a unit controller at the plant, said the company’s commitment to have a 350MW battery — larger than any currently operating — up and running at the plant by 2026 offered no comfort to him or his ­colleagues.

“Their timetable has the battery up and running by 2026, but also they have the plant fully ­operational until 2028, so this doesn’t seem to allow for workers like myself to make any transition, because it would need new people to construct and run it,” he said. “My understanding is most of the jobs are in the construction phase anyway.”

EnergyAustralia’s promises of carbon neutrality by 2050, and its commitment to cleaner energy, threaten to leave behind workers like Mr Schoer, 52, despite the company’s commitments to support the workforce through its transition to cleaner energy.

“My job is a specialised one, and not easily transferable to other industries,” Mr Schoer said. “If there was a project like nuclear power, an idea that is starting to get a bit of traction around here, then my skills could transfer across.”

 

EnergyAustralia managing ­director Catherine Tanna said her company was determined to ­retire the coal-powered Yallourn plant and make the transition to cleaner energy in a way that didn’t leave the workforce or the community behind.

“Our $10m support package, coupled with seven years’ advance notice, means our power station and mine site people will have time to plan,” she said.

CFMEU Mining and Energy Victorian president Trevor Williams said the existing workers “don’t deserve to be thrown on the scrap heap”.

“Power stations are the heart of the Latrobe economy. The community is still suffering from the sudden closure of Hazelwood (a neighbouring coal-powered plant) in 2017 with just four months’ notice,” he said.

Australian Manufacturing Workers Union national secretary Steve Murphy was also concerned about the apparent lack of a transition plan. “Here is another example of decisions made in the boardroom in the interests of private profit, with little regard to the impact on workers who have powered our states for decades,” he said.

Tannelle Schessl, at T&T Quality Cut Butchers in Moe, says if power station jobs disappear ‘that money disappears from the community’. Picture: Aaron Francis

While Mr Schoer was keen to talk about the broader impact of the earlier closure on his region and his co-workers, EnergyAustralia’s announcement comes at a tricky time for him personally. He will be 59 if the plant’s closure goes to plan, the year his now five-year-old son reaches high school.

Mr Schoer accepted the company’s closure announcement offered him a clear time frame in which to develop new skills, but one thing wasn’t up for negotiation. “Whatever happens I want to stay in the valley. I’ve lived here all my life.”

The trickle-down impact of the potential loss of those high-paying jobs has Latrobe Valley businesses worried.

“When ­Hazelwood closed we did see a lot of people move out of the area or work out of the area,” Tannelle Schessl from T&T Quality Cut Butchers in Moe said. “It does affect a lot of businesses­ beyond the plant ­itself.

“There’s not a lot of places where you can earn the incomes that they were earning, so if they disappear that money disappears from the community.”