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Australia’s coal-fired power industry is in historic decline and could be gone altogether by 2040.
That’s the conclusion of a Guardian Australia report analysing the closure rate of ageing coal plants, the industry’s shrinking share of energy production and a reluctance to finance new coal projects. The report notes that “about a fifth of the country’s coal capacity has disappeared since 2012”, 12 coal plants have shut down in the last five years and there is little appetite to develop new ones. Those realities are at odds with energy minister Josh Frydenberg, who declared ($) earlier this month that new coal plants had a role to play in Australia’s energy future.
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Alex McKinnon, The Saturday Paper
