Queensland LNP axes renewable targets, chaining Queenslanders to unreliable coal

The Queensland Conservation Council has condemned the Crisafulli Government for repealing the State’s renewable energy targets, declaring that this is another ideological attack on clean energy that will scare away regional investment and drive up power bills.

The move by the Crisafulli Government goes against advice of recent reports by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC), which have highlighted that power prices will rise significantly without the timely build out of renewable energy, storage and transmission needed to replace ageing coal power stations.

This comes shortly after a new Reliability Watch report identified that Queensland’s coal fleet, despite being the youngest, is the least reliable in the National Electricity Market. Over the winter period, an average of 26% of Queensland’s coal-fired power station capacity was offline, compared to 22% in NSW and 16% in Victoria.

Queensland Conservation Campaigner Stephanie Gray said

The Crisafulli Government's move to repeal Queensland’s renewable energy targets is just another ideological attack on clean energy from this government that favours ploughing taxpayer money into dirty, unreliable coal and gas.

The latest reports by the Australian Energy Market Operator and Commission make it crystal clear that the longer we delay the build out of renewable energy and storage, the more we pay because our coal-fired power stations are ageing and increasingly unreliable.

Queensland’s failing coal-fired power stations went offline a staggering 131 times over the last year, and most of these were unplanned breakdowns.

No matter how many billions of taxpayer dollars the Queensland LNP throws at failing coal, we’re going to keep seeing rolling breakdowns because these clunkers are increasingly unreliable as they age.

Any sensible government should be able to see that we need to be building replacement renewable energy and storage now, not scaring away new clean energy investment as energy demand grows and coal breakdowns spike.

Repealing our renewable energy targets sends the signal that Queensland is closed for clean business and investors should take their money and jobs elsewhere. It demonstrates that the Queensland LNP is putting ideology over affordable clean energy for Queenslanders.

The ideological commitment to expensive fossil fuels is also behind the Queensland Government planning to build more new gas fired power stations, despite the fact that yesterday’s plan from the market operator demonstrates that storage is the cheapest option to back renewable energy, not gas.

The Crisafulli Government’s moves to axe renewable energy in favour of flogging our failing coal clunkers for decades to come is a recipe for unreliable energy, higher power bills and more pollution.

The Energy Roadmap Amendment Bill passed also removes the requirement that the majority of Queensland’s energy generation should be owed by the State Government.

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