The Australian government needs to help fund coal-fired power producers because finance and insurance for coal plants is becoming unaffordable or too hard to secure, power producer Alinta Energy’s head said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The issue is coming to a head as investors and activists pressure banks and insurers to stop backing coal-fired plants while the country still needs at least some coal plants for steady power supply to back up wind and solar power.<\/p>\n
Coal-fired plants generated 55% of the country’s power in the year to June 2020, down from 62% from five years ago, according to the latest government data. That is expected to continue to decline with the growth of renewables.<\/p>\n
“One of the areas the government seriously needs to consider in this smooth transition to a low carbon economy is whether the government becomes a lender of last resort for the remaining life of those types of assets,” Alinta Energy Managing Director Jeff Dimery said at Credit Suisse’s 8th Australian Energy Conference.<\/p>\n
Alinta, an arm of Hong Kong family-owned Chow Tai Fook Enterprises, recently refinanced debt for its Loy Yang B coal plant, but found the number of lenders willing to be involved shrank over the course of protracted talks.<\/p>\n
“That was an exceedingly difficult process,” Dimery said.<\/p>\n
“We are finding it difficult to insure Loy Yang B. And the costs when we do are rising dramatically,” he added.<\/p>\n
He and others at the conference said Australia will need gas- and coal-fired power for many years to come, if the country wants to keep power prices down.<\/p>\n
The state of Victoria agreed in March to provide aid to keep a coal plant open to 2028 after its owner, EnergyAustralia, a unit of Hong Kong’s CLP Holdings, pushed to shut the plant four years earlier than planned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Australian government needs to help fund coal-fired power producers because finance and insurance for coal plants is becoming unaffordable or too hard to secure, power producer Alinta Energy’s head said on Thursday. The issue is coming to a head as investors and activists pressure banks and insurers to stop backing coal-fired plants while the country still needs at least some coal plants for steady power supply to back up wind and solar power. Coal-fired plants generated 55% of the country’s power in the year to June 2020, down from 62% from five years ago, according to the latest government […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coal"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}