Electricity bills no higher as Liddell powers down in NSW: Sharpe

“We’re not saying that we’re going to be closing it down in 2025. We’ll be working with the operator and we’ll be working very hard ... to make sure that the battery storage is there, that the firming technology is in place. We will make sure that energy security continues regardless of whether it’s renewables or other baseload.”

The closure of Liddell comes at a time when NSW has consistently been a net importer of energy from Victoria and Queensland, indicating it regularly does not generate enough electricity within the state to meet demand.

Liddell’s closure, which begins in just over a fortnight, will strip almost 1700 megawatts from the state’s energy supply.

Price assurance

Ms Sharpe said the incoming state government had been assured in briefings by departmental officials that the shutdown would not push prices higher, although they had identified a potential shortfall in supply from 2025 if new renewable sources hit hurdles or delays.

Eraring is owned by Origin, but the company is the subject of a $18.7 billion takeover bid by Canadian infrastructure giant Brookfield, which has flagged a willingness to work with the government on timelines for closure, so long as doing so does not result in the power station staying open longer than 2025.

Ms Sharpe confirmed reports that departmental officials had also revealed a series of cost blowouts and overruns in other areas – including a $1.4 billion overrun on the Western Harbour Tunnel project – and a weaker set of accounts than expected, which would prompt new ministers to reassess projects.

“We’ll be wary about every single project, we will have to the run the ruler over all of them,” Ms Sharpe said, as she took aim at the former Perrottet government for what she called a failure of transparency.

“The previous government has not been upfront about the state of the books and the state of these projects. We have to get to the bottom of it.”

The Australian Energy Market Operator warned in February of a weaker outlook for the state’s energy security since its assessment in 2022, due to a 12-month delay in the expected start-up of Snowy Hydro’s Kurri Kurri gas power plant near Newcastle, which was initially meant to come on stream in December this year.

Although the report also found that big volumes of new wind and solar power capacity being added to the market were boosting the state’s energy security, it said investment was urgently needed in long-duration energy storage, generation and transmission to fill the gap as coal power plants close.