Agreeing the 2030 climate targets was the easy bit: Australia is finding out now just how hard it will be to transform the power system to meet them.
The switch will include increasing the proportion of electricity supplied by renewables to 82 per cent by 2030-31, from about 30 per cent now.Labor’s Powering Australia plan envisages spending $75.8 billion on energy infrastructure, including $24 billion from the public sector.
In transmission, 10,000 kilometres of new lines must be built before 2030 even as worries mount that the first major new project – the $2.3 billion Project EnergyConnect power cable between South Australia and NSW – is falling behind schedule.$7.8 billion from the federal and NSW governments last week for NSW power lines to connect the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project and other critical transmission.
Grattan Institute energy program director Tony Wood describes the task of building replacement supply in the timeframe required as “eye-wateringly challenging”, made all the more difficult by problems such as, including EnergyConnect. If anything, the pace of the shift away from coal power will only pick up, says Matt Rennie, managing director at energy advisory firm Rennie.
“Given the lack of social licence currently being granted to coal plants around the world, there is no reason why they would stay open without explicit payments being made, and they could be forgiven for moving even more quickly than economics would dictate,” he says.
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