‘Utter audacity’: TV host slams Chris Bowen coal claim

Energy Minister Chris Bowen has been slammed for claiming coal-fired power stations are “the biggest threat to reliability” after NSW faced blackout warnings amid a heatwave gripping the state’s east.

NSW residents were urged to scale back their electricity use on Wednesday, including by turning off “non-essential appliances” like dishwashers and lowering airconditioning temperatures, to reduce demand on the energy grid as the heatwave coincided with outages at key coal-fired power plants.

Large parts of Sydney’s CBD were then hit by a blackout on Thursday morning caused by a burst water main flooding an underground substation.

Speaking to Sky News on Thursday, Mr Bowen said the perilous situation in NSW highlighted the fact that “the biggest threat to reliability in our energy system is coal-fired power stations”.

“We are building the transmission and the storage and backed by gas peaking when necessary to ensure a reliable system,” he said.

“But here’s the thing — the least reliable part of our energy grid at the moment is coal-fired power, that’s just a statement of fact.”

Sky News host Sharri Markson later hit back at the comment, calling Mr Bowen “a disaster as Energy Minister and we’re all suffering”.

“The biggest threat to reliability in our energy system isn’t coal-fired power stations, it’s this bloke, Chris Bowen,” she said in an editorial on Thursday night.

“There was a real risk of blackouts in NSW yesterday and Chris Bowen has blamed the fact there was not enough coal in the system for this. Not enough coal, when Bowen has spent every waking moment trying to get coal out of Australia’s energy system, and now he blames the fact there wasn’t enough of it and so we have this energy crisis.”

Markson said the NSW crisis “is what all the experts have been warning about”.

“Rushing the transition to renewables, shutting down coal-fired power stations when there’s not enough storage capacity or alternative baseload power like gas, and thus being left without enough power to run businesses, hospitals and households,” she said.

“The utter audacity of the guy. The breakdowns are happening because there’s been zero investment to extend their life cycle, zero investment in ensuring their ongoing capability. Yes there were coal-fired power failures yesterday that were partly behind the crisis, which shows just how crucial coal-fired power is to our energy grid.”

Markson said that “whether we like it or not” the country still relied on coal-fired power.

“Bowen and the ideologues like him have refused to invest in the infrastructure to keep coal up and running for longer,” she said.

“They’ve rushed and encouraged the closure of coal-fired power stations.”

The comments came after Saul Kavonic, senior energy analyst at MST Marquee, suggested “Bowen blackouts” were coming.

“This is now the third near miss in almost as many years that we know about, but the truth is we’re seeing several years now of market meddling by the government finally coming home to roost,” Mr Kavonic told 2GB host Ben Fordham on Wednesday.

“What we’re seeing most recently is yes we’re seeing coal outages, there’s also been some transmission maintenance issues which has caused this but ultimately this isn’t a surprise.

“This time of year it’s normal to have some coal outages both planned and unplanned … and really the blame lies here firmly with the government and the regulator who’ve been asleep at the wheel once again. The circumstances we see today are completely to be expected and yet they’re only really starting to look for solutions when it gets to crisis level.”

Mr Kavonic said the blame “fundamentally lies most with Minister Chris Bowen”.

“And when the blackouts happen they will be the Bowen blackouts,” he said.

“I’m not a member of a political party, I just follow the energy markets. The multipronged assault that the Labor government has had since 2022 … the cumulative effect has been we now have no resilience or redundancy left in our energy system.

“The energy security we’ve taken for granted for over 30 years has now dissipated. So when we have some unusual events, but not that unusual, there’s no more slack in the system.”

In May, the NSW Labor government announced that it had secured an agreement with Origin Energy to extend the operation of the Eraring coal-fired power station until August 2027, after AEMO warned the state could face energy reliability risks from 2025 without it.

“We’ve been very clear that there is a very narrow path for us to walk to transition from coal-fired power energy generation in the state to renewable energy,” Premier Chris Minns said last month.

“That’s one of the reasons why we made a decision to keep the Eraring power station open for longer, so that we could have a little bit of buffer to get the Central-West Orana Renewable Energy Zone program up and running as well as all of our other projects in the state. We don’t want to see lights go off, we don’t want to see prices increase off their already high peak.”

Matt Kean, the former NSW Energy Minister under the Coalition, had opposed the extension of the Eraring power station.

Mr Kean went on to become the chair of Australia’s independent Climate Change Authority (CCA) in August.

Writing in The Australian Financial Review on Thursday, Mr Kean said the grid was under pressure this week “because of coal, not because of renewables”.

“Anyone arguing for the delay in building new clean capacity into the system is arguing for more blackouts, higher bills and a dirtier planet,” he wrote.

“The reality is that our ageing coal-powered plants couldn’t turn up when we needed them the most, on one of the hottest days of the year and this will become a more frequent reality if we continue to rely on old, clapped out machinery that is on its last legs.”

The NSW Energy Minister said on Wednesday evening that the state looked to have narrowly avoided a widespread power breakdown, but only after residents, businesses and government employees took steps to “reduce demand”.

Penny Sharpe confirmed that the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) had downgraded its blackout warning for the state.

“The risk of power supply shortage in NSW has considerably reduced and AEMO has downgraded its warning,” Ms Sharpe said in a statement.

“We thank the households, businesses and NSW government employees who have taken steps to reduce demand on the system this evening.”

In its annual progress report released on Wednesday, the CCA said Labor’s ability to meet its 2030 renewable electricity target would depend on the start of projects which have yet to begin, warning measures to reduce emissions and increase renewables had “not yet reached the speed and scale we need”.

The report said while Australia was on track to meet its 82 per cent 2030 target and had made “significant progress”, achieving it would be dependent on the on-time rollout of its environmental and energy policies.

This includes its $22.7 billion Future Made in Australia Bill, which has yet to pass parliament but aims to supercharge investment into renewable energy projects, and its New Vehicle Efficiency Standard, which will come into effect from January 1, 2025.

While Australia’s emissions were falling, the report said current rates would not achieve the 2030 reductions target of 43 per cent below 2005 levels.

Mr Bowen told parliament on Wednesday the blackout scares in NSW were largely driven by the “unreliability of coal”.

“The notion that Australia’s ageing coal fleet should — or in fact could — be relied on to an even greater extent to power our system, is nothing shout of magical thinking,” he said. “Already consumers are feeling the impacts of running old coal generators longer. There has not been a single day in the past 18 months without some coal fired generation experiencing unplanned outages.”

Mr Bowen also acknowledged that 2024 marked an “all-time record for renewables”, with new data from the Clean Energy Regulator stating up to 7.5GW of renewable energy was connected to the grid this year.

“This world-beating uptake has been made possible by the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme,” he said. “And it means we’ve now got more rooftop solar capacity in our system than the entire fleet of coal fired power stations across the country.”

— with NCA NewsWire