The head of a major energy company in Australia has warned that shutting down coal and gas power plants too early will expose the national power grid to significant risks.
In an interview with the Australian Financial Review, EnergyAustralia managing director Mark Collette said there needed to be some form of agreement between governments and energy companies that dictated the timing of the closure of fossil fuel generators to prevent shortfalls in generation capacity.
He explained that the development of new renewable energy sources failed to catch up with the shutdown of traditional power plants across Australia and called for the adoption of “closure contracts” to ensure that power stations could only retire when there was sufficient generation capacity to replace them….