The Victorian Greens have said closing Loy Yang A in 2035 will mean twelve more years of burning coal, and have urged the Victorian Labor Government to begin the process earlier.
The Greens say there’s no good reason the Government can’t undertake a phased, sensible transition out of Loy Yang A’s four units much sooner than halfway through the next decade.
The Greens have said they also want the Government to come clean on the ‘risk sharing mechanism’ included in today’s announcement, and whether it involves Victoria taking on the financial risk of keeping one of the state’s outdated polluting brown coal power stations running longer than its private owner otherwise would.
Coal is one of the leading causes of the climate crisis, yet Victoria still gets almost two-thirds of its electricity from mining and burning coal.
In fact, Victoria’s brown coal plants burn Australia’s most polluting coal. They’re old, unreliable and spew toxic pollution that is harming the health of local communities.
Despite this the Government has continued to prop them up and ignore the climate science and market conditions saying they must be closed much sooner.
Victorian Greens coal transition spokesperson, Dr Tim Read, said if the Government was serious about achieving 95 per cent renewable energy by 2035, it needed to transition out of coal urgently, with a just transition for workers and communities.
He added that today’s announcement was clearly an agreement to keep Loy Yang A open for another 12 years, and yet another example of the Government propping up a private coal company.
As stated by Victorian Greens coal transition spokesperson, Dr Tim Read:
“The writing is on the wall for Victoria’s brown coal plants which burn Australia’s most polluting coal and are predicted to become stranded assets.
“Yet today the Victorian Labor Government has agreed to keep Loy Yang A running for 12 more years, past its use-by date and potentially for longer than its owner may otherwise decide.
“Labor needs to reassure Victorians that they’re not taking on a future financial risk in order to prop up the state’s biggest carbon polluter
“If we want to accelerate our transition to renewable energy and do our part in tackling the worsening climate crisis, we need a faster phased transition out of coal in this state as soon as possible.”
