Why it doesn't make much sense to make AGL's 'old lady Liddell' run a marathon

If Senator Matt Canavan visits AGL's Liddell power station as scheduled next month, there's a good chance staff will show the corroded pipes and fatigued metal that serve as signs its use-by date of 2022 is closing in.

"I still don't think we should be building coal-fired power
stations," says Kate Coates, General Manager of
AGL Macquarie at Liddell Power Station. 

No doubt the erstwhile resources minister – before the recent citizenship scandal broke – will try to press the energy giant to commit extending the plant's operations another five years to 2027.

But, as a dozen or more journalists visiting the site learned on Tuesday, there are a multitude of reasons why that doesn't make a lot of sense.

Or as Kate Coates, the general manager of the AGL Macquarie unit, puts it when describing the plant's partial failure during February's heatwave: "Liddell is an old lady: we can't ask [her] to run a marathon a few days in a row without her falling over.”

Read the analysis in today’s Melbourne Age by Peter Hannam - “Why it doesn't make much sense to make AGL's 'old lady Liddell' run a marathon.”