A Senate inquiry into the retirement of coal-fired power stations has recommended the Federal Government create a comprehensive energy transition plan to help with the ordered closure of the country's coal-powered plants.
The interim report from the Environment and Communications References Committee, which was chaired by Greens senator Larissa Waters, was tabled in Parliament last night.
The committee handed down four recommendations.
Greens energy spokesman Adam Bandt said the recommendations looked at how to close coal-fired power stations to reduce pollution, balanced with the need to have a transition plan to help workers and maintain energy security.
"For the first time ever a Senate committee has said that Australia should have a plan for the orderly retirement of coal-fired power stations and their replacement with renewable energy," he said.
"Government needs a plan so we can grow the new industries in places like the Latrobe Valley, so that when a coal-fired power station shuts down, workers have a secure job to move in to.
"If you leave it until after the announcement and throw tens of millions of dollars at it, you don't create a sustainable industry, you don't create a secure future for people in the Valley.
"Let's make sure we do it in an orderly way that looks after workers, that looks after communities, that makes sure that the lights stay on."
Mr Bandt said the alternative was to allow boardrooms in Tokyo or Paris to make the decision, "as we found with Hazelwood", and to put the country's energy security and energy future in the hands of large overseas companies.
He said the report had divided the committee, with Liberal members planning to submit a dissenting document.
"The Liberal members have said let's leave it all up to the market and everything we're doing is fine," he said.
"But I think if you talk to workers in the Latrobe Valley, you wouldn't agree with the Liberals that everything we're doing is fine."
Industry support for transition plan recommendation
Australian Energy Council chief executive Matthew Warren said the council had been pushing for a national plan for 10 years.
"We've supported national schemes to introduce emissions trading or carbon taxes, and we still see that's absolutely crucial to delivering the transformation that we have to deliver over the next generation," Mr Warren said.
"So we agree with that fundamental recommendation of this report.
"We've really had a decade of stop-start in Australia. We can see that playing out in the Gippsland basin.
"When we had the announced closure of the Hazelwood power station a couple of weeks ago, our concern is not that an old power station is announcing its decommissioning, it's that we have no plan to replace it."
Sunset clause for power stations would help with planning
Mr Warren said the focus needed to be on reducing emissions rather than closing power stations.
"When we're regulating these type of commercial announcements [about station decommissioning], we're assuming that we know exactly the right time to do it, and almost by definition that's never the right time," he said.
"If we set the emissions reductions then we can work it out … with the right scheme that will signal to high-emission generators, like coal-fired power stations, that they've got a sunset period and they will operate to that and close at the appropriate time.
"We need to think hard about how we're going to run the system at the lowest cost while maintaining reliability."
Transition time needed to lessen impact
CFMEU Victorian mining and energy division secretary Geoff Dyke said without a good transition plan, closing the Latrobe Valley's coal-powered stations would devastate the area.
"If we're going to transition to renewables over a period of time, there needs to be a transition for coal closures and the impact on workers and the community," he said.
"What people don't realise is the low cost of brown coal-fired electricity helps maintain affordability.
"If all the brown coal generators close, we believe electricity would be unaffordable and obviously that would flow into manufacturing — you'd likely have a complete collapse of Latrobe Valley industry."
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