New federal government figures have revealed that Australia’s dependence on burning brown coal to produce power is diminishing as ageing coal-fired power stations close and the use of black coal, gas and renewable energy increases.
The government published Australian Energy Update shows that while the nation remains heavily reliant on coal and other fossil fuels for electricity generation, the use of brown coal, one of the most carbon emission-intensive energy sources, eased 17 per cent in the 2018 financial year.
The report indicates brown coal now supplies about 13 per cent of energy demand.
The downturn in the production of brown coal-fired power is linked to the closure of the Hazelwood power station in the in the southern Victorian state’s Latrobe Valley and the impact of ageing coal-fired plants having to shut down because of maintenance issues.
Coal remains dominant in Australia’s energy mix, according to the statistics released by the conservative Liberal-National government today.
However, the decline of brown coal drove a four per cent dip in overall national coal use in 2017-18, while the use of black coal increased three per cent.
Although coal accounts for 60 per cent of national power generation, the report said, the figure marks a dramatic decline since coal-fired power’s peak share of 84 per cent during the late 1990s.
The report found renewable energy such as wind and solar experienced strong growth of 10 per cent in 2017-18, contributing to 17 per cent of total generation, with most coming from wind farms.
Renewable energy rose to 19 per cent of total generation over the 2018 calendar year.
The Liberal-Nation government’s Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor said that although “we are using less coal than we used to”, fossil fuels such as coal remained an “important part of meeting our energy needs”.
“The challenge in the energy sector is integrating the renewable energy boom to deliver affordable and reliable power,” Mr Taylor said.
“That means keeping our existing generation in, and running at full tilt, and supporting complementary investment in dispatchable generation and storage.”
Wind power surged 20 per cent in 2017-18, contributing to 34 per cent of renewable energy generation and six per cent of Australia’s overall generation.
The government said it had invested $1.4 billion in reliable generation and storage and was supporting the expansion of the Snowy Hydro scheme and the development of a second Bass Strait interconnector “to turn Tasmania’s ‘Battery of the Nation’ vision into reality”.
Lobby group Environment Victoria said brown coal was Australia’s “dirtiest source of electricity”, with Victoria’s three remaining brown coal power stations producing more than eight per cent of Australia’s greenhouse pollution and “fuelling unprecedented drought and bushfire conditions”.
“On top of that they are increasingly unreliable and uneconomic to run,” Jono La Nauze, Environment Victoria’s chief executive, said in a statement.
“It is essential we replace coal with clean energy generation as rapidly as possible to bring Australia’s energy system into the 21st century and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.”
“We are a country for whom the transition to zero emissions is more challenging than most because we do have higher emissions per capita,” said Tony Wood, energy director at the Grattan Institute, a public policy think tank.
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