Senator Canavan on Tuesday released a Nationals backbench policy for new coal power,which he said would lower electricity prices and grow manufacturing.
“We believe the government should build a coal-fired power station because that remains Australia’s cheapest form of reliable power,” he said.
Coal fired power costs three times as much to build as big solar farms and twice as much as wind,according to the 2020 GenCost report by CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator,which compares the cost of building and running various electricity generation technologies.
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The GenCost report says new coal capacity costs $4450 per kilowatt to build,large scale solar is $1408 and wind power is $1951. And that’s just capital expenditure for construction.
Based on these numbers it would cost more than $7.5 billion to replace the 1.7 gigawatt Liddell coal power plant when it shuts in 2023.
GenCost says renewables are “cheaper than the cost of new coal and gas-fired electricity generation” even though they require investment to expand the transmission network to link solar and wind to the grid,and to build up battery storage.