Australia needs to get ready for a future without coal: Origin CEO   

Sydney Morning Herald
November 17, 2024


Power and gas giant Origin Energy’s boss has warned Australia is under-prepared as it drifts closer toward a decade of extraordinary upheaval for the electricity grid when all remaining coal-fired generators are expected to close.

While coal has been Australia’s main electricity source for decades, its years of powering the grid are numbered, as utilities face spiralling costs to maintain ageing power stations and intense competition from cleaner and cheaper renewables.

Origin CEO Frank Calabria is leading the industry’s push for a comprehensive redesign of Australia’s energy market rules.


At least half of eastern Australia’s coal-fired plants are due to shut down within 10 years, while the market operator expects coal to leave the grid entirely by 2040. Efforts to clean up Australia’s polluting electricity sector depend heavily on replacing fossil fuels with more wind, solar and hydropower projects.   

But balancing a system increasingly dominated by less-predictable renewables is much more challenging, says Frank Calabria, who is running Australia’s biggest power and gas retailer, adding the need for long-term vision and policy certainty.

Calabria is leading the industry’s push for a comprehensive redesign of Australia’s energy market rules, which he says are no longer fit for purpose and will be unable to drive the multi-decade investment boom needed to transform the grid and minimise the threat of power shortages or price spikes after coal’s exit.

“We’ve got this enormous transformation of the energy sector required, and therefore the amount of investment, new technology and scale needs to be put into that context,” Calabria said.



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“We need to do it as smoothly as possible for customers, and we need to make sure the lights are on at all times.”

Much of the federal government’s energy transition focus centres on Australia’s 2030 targets, which include delivering a 43 per cent emissions cut and more than doubling the share of renewables in the grid from 40 per cent to 82 per cent.



The Capacity Investment Scheme, launched by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, aims to turbocharge the financing of new renewable projects and dispatchable assets, such as big batteries (for when it’s not sunny or windy), out to the end of the decade.

Calabria backs the government’s 2030 targets, but warned the energy transition “does not end in 2030”, and difficult reform decisions for the 2030s and beyond must not be kept in the “too-hard basket” or left too late.

“One of the features today is decisions get made, but they get made very late, and they tend to get made late against an urgency or real need,” Calabria said.

He pointed to the need for more fast-response gas-fired power stations, known as “peakers”, which the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) warns will play an infrequent but critical role covering supply shortfalls during long periods of low wind and sunlight.

Last winter, gas-powered generators ran much harder than usual as a protracted wind lull collided with a burst of cold weather hiking electricity and gas demand from home heaters. Unlike grid-scale batteries, which exhaust their stored energy in a matter of hours, gas plants can run for as long as they are needed.

However, gas remains shut out from federal funding under the Capacity Investment Scheme. The Victorian government has refused to support taxpayer money going to fossil fuels that contribute to global warming.

“Not everyone has the same support for gas,” Calabria said. “But if you look at what’s required if you are going to close coal ... we do need to have a scalable, long-duration technology that can go for days.”

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He also called for market rules to give greater consideration to the promising role of aggregated networks of home solar panels and batteries, known as “virtual power plants”, whereby power providers give customers bill credits in exchange for being able to use their stored energy to address imbalances in the grid and keep the network stable.

Australia is experiencing one of the world’s fastest energy transitions as renewable energy expands its share of the grid every year and now supplies nearly 40 per cent of the average generation mix.

But the installation of new renewable generation and storage projects and thousands of kilometres of new power lines needed to link them to major cities is running behind the rate officials say is necessary to keep power supplies and prices stable once the next wave of coal-fired power stations retire, making grid planners and governments nervous.

The Albanese government is expected to launch a fresh review to examine post-2030 power market reforms which will consider arrangements to pay generators for being on standby to supply the grid when needed, rather than only paying generators for the power they produce.

whiteknight wrote on Nov 17^th, 2024 at 5:54pm:


And energy poverty.

whiteknight wrote on Nov 17^th, 2024 at 5:54pm:

By refusing to sign up to the nuclear power pact, Albo and Bowen look even more stupid than before. 

We are doomed to third world status thanks to AnAl and his traitorous government. We should be investing in coal and gas until nuclear comes on line, not this 'renewables' fantasy that has foreign investors laughing all the way to the bank while the Australian countryside is destroyed and our farmers driven off the land.   

How long will it be though, before we are forbidden to criticise AnAl and his traitors? Ever more restrictive laws are being put in place to silence the people and prevent access to information.

There are signs that the decent people of Australia have had enough, but will the momentum build in time to save our country? 

Belgarion wrote on Jul 30^th, 2025 at 6:13pm:



Well that should have transcribed at the last election - but it didn't, the opposite occurred.

More of the same for who knows how long seeing the LNP Opposition are virtually weak as piss Labor Lites.

Where are all these decent people who've had enough?

Bobby. wrote on Jul 31^st, 2025 at 8:34am:


Why should they? They're giving us the biggest root we've ever had.

Meanwhile ...




Aerial views of the Hunter Valley Operations. The Independent Planning Commission (IPC) has greenlit the HVO’s Continuation Project after a contentious assessment that drew in climate and environment groups, unions, state authorities and more than 10,000 public submissions. Photograph: Lock the Gate

Wed 30 Sep 2026 15.48 AEST

The New South Wales independent planner has approved the biggest coalmine project to ever go before it, allowing mining to continue until 2045 at a Hunter Valley project described by climate groups as a “carbon bomb”.

The Independent Planning Commission (IPC) has greenlit the Hunter Valley Operations (HVO) Continuation Project after a contentious assessment that drew in climate and environment groups, unions, state authorities and more than 10,000 public submissions.

On Wednesday, the commission said the greenhouse gas emissions from the mine, near Singleton, would “contribute to climate change impacts on the people, economy and environment of the Hunter region, NSW and globally”.

But these impacts had been “outweighed by its benefits to the Hunter region and NSW, including continued employment, economic activity, support for local business, ongoing royalties and taxation revenue”.

The IPC said the decision would “provide economic stability for the Hunter region and support a more orderly transition for workers, businesses and communities as the coal industry changes over time”.

In response, Georgina Woods, the co-national coordinator of the Lock the Gate Alliance, said: “There is no other way to describe this other than a catastrophic failure of the New South Wales planning system to protect the people of the state from the worst impacts of global warming.”

Climate campaigners had strongly opposed the project, saying it was out of line with Australia’s commitments under the Paris climate agreement and could affect extreme weather events.

‘Infamous betrayal of the public trust’
Groups reacted with dismay at the approval, with Rising Tide describing it as the “largest climate policy failure in NSW history”.

The Climate Council had described the project as a “climate bomb that would supercharge climate disasters”. One of its councillors – the former NSW Fire and Rescue commissioner Greg Mullins – on Wednesday raised concerns over overseas emissions from the coal.

“What NSW exports as coal, we import back as bushfires, floods, heatwaves and droughts,” Mullins said. “Climate harm does not stop at the border, and neither does the responsibility for it.”

Woods said the process for considering fossil fuel projects in NSW was “the best in the country” – including with its climate change act and an independent and transparent planning authority.

“The law was in place, and I am frankly shocked. It will go down in history as an infamous betrayal of the public trust.”

Glencore and Yancoal – the joint owners of HVO – want to continue digging coal at the north mine site until 2045, and mine from 2030 to 2042 at the south mine.

The IPC said HVO would have to prepare a plan to manage the emissions from burning the coal overseas that would limit exports to “jurisdictions with greenhouse gas emissions policies consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement”.

The project also requires federal environmental approval – a process expected to be decided before the end of the year.

HVO said coal had been mined at the site for 75 years and the project, which it said had strong local support, provided jobs for 1,500 people.

The state’s independent Net Zero Commission had warned the planning commission that approving the project could affect the state’s ability to meet climate targets in the future.

Over the life of the project, the company has estimated that 809m tonnes of CO₂-equivalent will be released into the atmosphere.

About 794Mt of that will be emitted when the coal is burned overseas, 87% of which will come from power plants, according to presentations HVO made to the IPC.

The Net Zero Commission recommended the planning authority should consider all of the impacts from the mine’s greenhouse gases, including from the burning of the coal in power stations overseas, and pointed to advances in climate science that can attribute real-world impacts to fossil fuel projects.

A new tool released by climate scientists this week suggested the additional global heating caused by the project’s approval would expose almost half a million people to unprecedented heat, kill nearly 15 million coral colonies on the Great Barrier Reef every time it bleaches and lead to more than 100 additional deaths from heatwaves in Europe to the end of this century.

The NSW Nature Conservation Council’s chief executive, Jacqui Mumford, said the decision was Chris Minns’ “biggest climate failure” as premier and highlighted the government’s “complete inability to appropriately respond to the ever-growing climate crisis”.

...

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/sep/30/hunter-valley-coal-projec...

King Coal is back! This week the New South Wales Independent Planning Commission gave permission for two coalminers in the Hunter Valley to continue their operations until 2045. Hallelujah! Glencore and Yancoal have now been given the go-ahead to extend the life of their so-called Hunter Valley Operation.

Naturally, the stupidist comment of the week in response to the news came from the Climate Council, whose head honcho Greg Mullins, proclaimed, ‘What NSW exports as coal, we import back as bushfires, floods, heatwaves and droughts.’

Er, no. What we ‘import back’ is money and jobs. Fifteen hundred jobs at the very least are saved. And the profits, which should be roughly in the area of $25 billion, will go to re-invigorate both the region as well as, via royalties, the NSW government’s coffers to the tune, again, of potentially billions of dollars. In other words, what we will really be ‘importing back’, Mr Mullins, are much-needed schools, hospitals, roads, homes and livelihoods.


If there are severe bushfires in Australia this summer or next, they will be the result of either arson, accident or the lengthy periods of neglectful forest management rather than a new mine in the Hunter Valley. Similarly, severe flooding in the eastern states will be the result of the chronic failure over decades to build sufficient dams and other infrastructure, along with foolishly developing Australia’s flood plains, rather than the coal being dug near Singleton. The constant, juvenile and hysterical fear-mongering by left-wing lunatics about the exploitation of Australia’s natural resources has done immense damage to this country. We are poorer than we should be, we are far less innovative and entrepreneurial than we once were, and, unforgivably, for the first time in this nation’s history, we are leaving the next generation less well off than the last.

Spectator

A Future Without Greens is good for environment.

tallowood wrote on Oct 1^st, 2026 at 10:53am:


Get rid of Greens, make Australia green again.

Dry Lightning !

ai :


Dry lightning is a major natural ignition source for Australian wildfires, occurring when thunderstorms produce lightning but the rain evaporates before reaching the ground due to hot, dry lower atmospheric conditions.  This phenomenon leaves vegetation dry and highly flammable without any rain to suppress the resulting sparks, creating significant bushfire risks, particularly in remote areas.

Recent and historical data highlight the severity and frequency of these events:

Tasmania: The incidence of dry lightning fires has increased dramatically since the 1990s, with researchers suggesting this is the "new normal" due to climate change. In early 2025, thousands of strikes sparked multiple fires in wilderness areas, including the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, where fires have burned into regions that historically rarely experienced fire.

Victoria: In February 2025, over 500,000 lightning strikes were recorded across the state, igniting more than 50 fires and destroying homes.  The state continues to face risks from dry lightning amid heatwave conditions, with fires often starting in national parks like Grampians and Little Desert.

South Australia and Queensland: A major outbreak in March 2025 sparked at least 40 bushfires in South Australia and Victoria due to dry lightning and parched countryside.  In Queensland, dry lightning has been responsible for igniting over a dozen fires in recent weeks, exacerbated by El Niño conditions.

Climate change is contributing to this trend by creating longer and more frequent dry spells, increasing the availability of dry fuel, and altering weather patterns to favour high-based storms that produce prolific cloud-to-ground lightning with minimal rainfall.

ai :
wildfires started by arson in australia 2026?

Arson has been a confirmed factor in several localised bushfire incidents across Australia during the severe 2025–2026 summer fire season. While the country faced catastrophic conditions and massive blazes that burned hundreds of thousands of hectares in the southeastern states, official investigations indicate that macro-level causes like dry lightning and extreme heat fuelled the largest emergencies.

Sock Puppet

Lame Duck Donald wrote on Oct 1^st, 2026 at 5:34pm:


You start by saying Australia, then morph to South eastern Australia. What credence do you claim?

Jasin wrote on Oct 2^nd, 2026 at 5:09pm:


I would suggest that Australia had been a desert continent for a period before the first humans walked this continent. We are advised that much of the continent was under water millions of years ago. And long before the continent had its first human inhabitant, the soils of the desert were so saline that it has taken hundreds of thousands of years with rainfall slowly washing the infertility away to be bareable for shrubs to grow.

My geography lessons from the 1990s have taught me that even with the burning of the forests and grasslands to chase out the animals for indigenous Australian hunters, the region could regenerate in a few years with new trees and shrubs growing in relatively fertile regions.

I hope that we can develop technology to control our climate drivers. But it is a little difficult to blame the ancestors of indigenous people of Australia for the dryness of the country.

Deforestation in Australia triggers dryland salinity by replacing deep-rooted native vegetation with shallow-rooted crops and pastures that use less water.  This imbalance reduces evapotranspiration, causing groundwater levels to rise and mobilise ancient salt deposits stored deep in the soil and regolith.

2025 was the worst year for federally approved deforestation in Australia in over a decade, with the government green lighting the destruction of more than 57,000 hectares of threatened species habitat.  This figure represents a 15-year high, marking a 15-year high that is more than double the amount approved in 2024 and over five times the amount from 2023.