Alinta CEO Jeff Dimery says excluding coal from the capacity mechanism in the reformed electricity market would be gambling with energy security and prices for consumers.
Coal must absolutely be included in the “capacity” market system being proposed for the National Electricity Market until at least 2029 to avoid blackouts and price spikes for consumers, said Alinta Energy chief executive Jeff Dimery.
Australian Energy Regulator chairwoman Clare Savage said it would be more difficult to manage the transition if coal and gas were not included in the mechanism.of the governments that have the ultimate say on the structure of the mechanism. Mr Dimery said coal could easily be excluded from participating in auctions for new capacity to leave the way clear for only low-emissions technologies.“The nature of the capacity market is such that if the government wants to incentivise low-emissions technologies, they’d run a capacity auction for that particular capacity for 20 years and exclude coal from competing for that,” he said.the delays in the construction of the Snowy 2.
Mr Dimery was speaking just ahead of departing for Europe, where he will hold talks as part of Alinta’s investigations into switching Loy Yang B to run on biomass, rather than brown coal.