Renewables produced more energy than brown coal and gas over summer

Growth in wind and solar energy over the past two years has almost entirely replaced the lost output from the Hazelwood power station during summer, a new report says.

The Hazelwood power station in 2018. Almost all of
the generation capacity lost in Hazelwood’s closure
 has been replaced by renewables. 

The latest Green Energy Markets report says renewable energy produced 128% more megawatt hours of electricity than gas and 23% more than brown coal over the 2018-19 summer in the national electricity market states.

It also shows that output from solar energy alone exceeded that from brown coal and gas when averaged across the 9am-5pm period.

Demand for electricity hits a peak between 11.30am and 5.30pm in the summer months.

Read the story from The Guardian by Lisa Cox - “Renewables produced more energy than brown coal and gas over summer.”

Latrobe Valley community demands clarity about future of Hazelwood brown coal mine

Gippsland MP Darren Chester wants answers
from Engie about Hazelwood Power Station.

The Nationals' Federal Member for Gippsland Darren Chester is calling for the owners of the Hazelwood Power Station to give a clear timeline for the plant's closure.

The French majority owner Engie has categorically denied reports it will shut down the facility in the first half of next year.

But Mr Chester said he was deeply concerned by ongoing speculation about the station's future and hundreds of jobs it provides.

He said a premature closure would be devastating.

Read the ABC Rural story - “Latrobe Valley community demands clarity about future of Hazelwood brown coal mine.”

Viewing Hazelwood with clarity, courtesy of 20/20 hindsight

A vision many would rather not see - a
network of power lines springing from the
 dirty Hazelwood, fossil fuel powered
plant in Victoria's La Trobe Valley.

The Hazelwood power station and coal mine are just visible from David Briggs’ property up in the mountains that surround the town of Morwell. He sweeps an outstretched arm across the valley and points, in case I miss it. His old fluorescent mining jacket hangs loosely on his frail limbs.

Morwell is a small town encircled by open-cut coal mines and power stations in the Australian state of Victoria, less than a hundred miles east of Melbourne. A few miles to the north of it stand the massive exhaust stacks of the Yallourn power plant. Farther east lies the Loy Yang plant. The Hazelwood power plant and mine complex pushes right up against the town’s southern border; only a four-lane freeway and a thin strip of grass separate the mine from some homes. All power lines from here lead to Melbourne.

In February 2014, at the tail end of a scorching Australian summer of record heatwaves, it was there that a change in wind brought an out-of-control bushfire into the northern face of the open-cut coal mine. Briggs, 55, usually works on mines up in northern Australia, but he was back home here on holidays when the fire broke out. He got a call from a contractor saying they were looking for machinery operators to help put out the blaze. He figured, Why not? It would probably be a couple of days’ work. Briggs shakes his head now, remembering, and his eyes glaze over. “Of course in hindsight, I never would have taken it,” he says.

Read the Earth Island Journal story - “Life Beyond Coal.”