Family First’s Jane Foreman says AEMO’s warning that Victoria faces a looming “double squeeze” on its electricity grid (Herald Sun, 25 August) is further evidence for what Family First has argued all year: keep the coal stations running, unlock Victoria’s gas and let nuclear into the mix, because you cannot power data centres and electric heating with a press release about batteries.
Mrs Foreman says AEMO’s annual outlook confirms Victoria is being squeezed from both ends at once. Yallourn, which supplies more than 15 per cent of the state’s power, closes in mid-2028 as part of roughly 15 gigawatts of coal and gas generation retiring nationally over the next decade, while data centres are forecast to use seven times more electricity by 2035-36, jumping from 5 terawatt hours a year to 34 – 13 per cent of everything on the national grid, up from 3 per cent today. AEMO warns Victoria could struggle to meet demand as early as 2030-31, and the later date of 2033-34 depends on VNI West, a transmission line already more than two years late that the Opposition has vowed to axe if it wins in November.
Mrs Foreman says the most telling line came from Labor’s own Energy and Resources Minister, Jaclyn Symes, who conceded that “as coal retires and gas supply declines, we need more generation, more storage and the transmission to connect it so we can keep the lights on”. It is the same government phasing out gas and pushing families onto electric heating, which AEMO says is precisely why Victoria’s winter demand is now catching up to summer.
“AEMO has just handed Victorians the bill for Labor’s energy ideology, and it comes with a double squeeze,” said Mrs Foreman. “Retire the plants that keep the lights on, force every family off gas and onto electric heating, invite the world’s data centres in to soak up seven times more power, and then act surprised when the grid cannot cope in 2030. That is not bad luck. It is a plan, and it is the wrong one.”
“Family First’s energy policy reads like it was written for this report: keep every remaining coal station open until there is something real to replace it, unlock Victoria’s gas instead of banning it, and let nuclear be part of the mix,” said Mrs Foreman. “That is not radical, it is arithmetic. You cannot run 34 terawatt hours of data centres on a transmission line that is two years late and may never be built at all.”
Family First is calling on Premier Ben Carroll to guarantee Yallourn will not close until genuine replacement capacity is generating, to abandon the gas phase-out that is driving Victoria’s winter demand higher, and to publish the state’s plan for meeting demand from 2030-31 if VNI West does not proceed.
Mrs Foreman says the AEMO outlook is further proof Victoria needs Family First’s genuinely independent voice holding this government to account in the Legislative Council after November, because Victorian families are the ones who pay when a grid is run on ideology instead of arithmetic.
