LNP's 'sticky tape' solution to ageing coal plants doomed to fail Qld

The Queensland Conservation Council today condemns comments from senior figures in the Crisafulli Government that they will keep the State's failing coal power stations online past their scheduled retirement dates, and even for "many, many decades".

This ideological pro-fossil fuel stance is a huge waste of taxpayer money and will risk energy reliability for Queenslanders.

QCC campaigner Stephanie Gray said

No matter how hard the Crisafulli Government crosses their fingers and wishes, they can’t hold together our ageing and increasingly unreliable coal clunkers with sticky tape.

The Treasurer and Energy Minister David Janetzki has already splashed more than a billion taxpayer dollars on coal maintenance and yet just yesterday three state-owned coal units were broken down.

Over the last summer period, Queensland coal power stations were offline or broken down a staggering 78 times.

No matter how many billions of taxpayer dollars the Government is willing to funnel into coal, we're going to keep seeing explosions and breakdowns as the ageing power stations head towards the end of their technical lives.

All Queenslanders should be concerned about how long the Crisafulli Government plans to subsidise these coal-fired power stations when they could be facilitating the shift to more affordable renewable energy backed by storage.

Pledging to keep coal open for 'many, many decades' while axing wind farms is signing Queenslanders up for more expensive and unreliable energy. It's not practical, it's ideological.

The response we’ve seen from the Crisafulli Government over the last day shows the massive influence the wealthy fossil fuel lobby has in Queensland.

If the Crisafulli Government is serious about keeping coal open for 'many, many decades' they're committing to break their pre-election climate action promise to Queenslanders, and wiping their hands clean of their responsibility to protect the Great Barrier Reef.

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