Time To Bulldoze Old Coal Fired Power Stations  

The SMH has an article quoting Hugh Outhred of UNSW pointing out that instead of selling off old coal fired power stations to the private sector, who will then fight to be able to make a financial return on them, the NSW government should be planning to bulldoze them over the next 10-20 years.

COAL-FIRED power stations should not be privatised but bulldozed over the next 20 years to curb greenhouse gas emissions, one of the state's leading energy academics has told the Iemma Government. In a submission to the Government's consultative committee on the power sell-off, Hugh Outhred, of the University of NSW, argued against the sale of state-owned retailers such as Energy Australia, saying they should be kept in government hands to drive a push to energy efficiency and cut demand.

Professor Outhred, who has worked as an adviser to the state's electricity industry and the Government, told the Herald that deep reductions in emissions from electricity generation were urgently needed. This meant phasing out coal-fired stations, and the process would take longer if they were privatised because new owners would need to make a profit.

"The existing coal-fired power stations should remain in public hands while they are old and polluting until we complete dealing with the problem they are creating," he said. "Before leasing the power station assets in NSW we should actually bulldoze them."

The sites could then be leased to private investors who could buy permits to carry on generating electricity, but only if their operations were cleaner gas-powered stations or used "clean coal technology", when it was finally available. The phase-out might take between 10 and 20 years, Professor Outhred said. "We don't do it all at once. That would be illogical."

The old coal-fired station at Tallawarra was bought in 2003 by TRUenergy, which is building one of the nation's most energy-efficient gas-generation power stations on the site.

The Premier, Morris Iemma, and Treasurer, Michael Costa, are firmly committed to the privatisation. Mr Costa said this week he hoped the Federal Government would decide soon on the permit system for power generators under the greenhouse emissions trading scheme to begin in 2010.

The permits will put a price on the emissions produced by the generators. Just how much they will be charged could determine whether the Iemma Government will reap the $15 billion it hopes to raise by privatising the power industry. But Professor Outhred said the push to get cheap permits for the heavily polluting generators was "totally inappropriate behaviour". "That is not rising to the problem we now face. It's just not good enough."