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Electricity prices could double with new coal-fired stations - Energy experts
According to energy experts, power prices for consumers could double, not fall, if new coal-fired power stations are built.
Speaking at the National Press Club, Prime Minister Mr Malcolm Turnbull said clean coal power stations will play a part in ensuring lower electricity prices under a Coalition Government. Old, high emissions coal-fired power stations are closing-down as they age, reducing baseload capacity.
Mr Turnbull said that "They cannot simply be replaced by gas, because it's too expensive, or by wind or solar because they are intermittent."
However, key manufacturing and business lobby the Australian Industry Group and energy experts strongly disagree that coal would be cheaper or more reliable, for several reasons.
Ai Group's principle national advisor Tennant Reed, said that "This is not a recipe for guaranteed lower prices, in fact prices would need to be sustained at very painful levels for the life of the project for that project to make its money back. Several authorities' projections, including from the CSIRO, put the price of new coal at $80 a megawatt hour and new wind and solar around the same level, but we are seeing lower prices achieved day by day [for wind and solar]."
Ai Group's research shows that the price could easily rise to $100 per megawatt hour as the increase in renewables means that coal plants cannot run at full capacity and charge accordingly.
According to work done, the electricity price needed for newly built cleaner coal-fired generation is likely to be between $135-203 a megawatt hour.
Kobad Bhavnagri said that "The price of $80 a megawatt hour for clean coal power assumes a uniform cost of funding between wind, solar and coal and that's simply not the case."
"No Australian bank would lend on project that carries so much financial and policy risk, and most banks have ruled out funding new coal projects."
Treasurer Scott Morrison says the Clean Energy Finance Corporation could be used to fund new clean coal power stations. The next option would be an overseas lender, but Mr Bhavnagri argued that the risk premium the lender would build into the cost would be prohibitively expensive.
Tennant Reed agreed that private financing is highly unlikely to eventuate for new coal.
He said that "Electricity sector investors are unlikely to finance a new coal-fired power station in Australia again," he said.
This would leave the Government to fund the project or provide some kind of guarantee, something that has not been ruled out, with Treasurer Scott Morrison telling the ABC that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation could potentially fund clean coal power stations.
Renewable energy costs falling fast
The cost of clean energy is also falling rapidly.
AGL's most recent wind project at Silverton on the NSW and South Australian border is generating power at $65 per megawatt hour.
Origin Energy's solar project in Queensland is estimated to be producing power at $80 a megawatt hour.
Former Origin boss Grant King told investors at the time of approving the project that, "solar competes with other forms of generation".
Source : ABC