The latest news reports regarding the need to extend the life of Eraring to keep the lights on should come as a wake-up call to the Albanese Labor Government that its energy plan is in tatters.
Federal Labor has already broken its promises on power prices and grid reliability and they’re on track to fall short of its renewable and emissions reduction targets.
While New South Wales Labor is looking at options to save Eraring, Federal Labor remains blind to the risk that lies ahead.
You don’t close one system down before a like-for-like replacement is ready to go.
Australia can’t afford for Eraring to close in 2025.
The energy system is in disarray and federal government policy continues to disincentivise supply and suffocate investment.
The former Coalition Government’s capacity mechanism provided the life-support Australia’s energy system needed for the transition to Net Zero but the first thing Federal Labor did was scrap it.
The Albanese Government remains silent about Eraring and is ignoring the energy chaos which threatens to engulf New South Wales.
With its head firmly stuck in the sand, Labor is now wanting to remove coal from its platform at its national conference next month, despite the fuel continuing to keep the lights on across the country.
Coal has generated as high as 80 percent of New South Wales electricity over the last 24 hours.
It’s time that Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen put their ideology aside and started providing meaningful support to all Australians by focusing their attention on reliability before the lights go out.