Stuck between price hikes and a hard place: Coalition must face up to coal exits and costly gas, experts warn - Renew Economy

Coal plants are closing faster than replacement capacity is being built. Experts quoted in the article warn that without firm alternatives, Australia faces either higher electricity prices or dependence on expensive gas for firming as the grid becomes increasingly weather-dependent. The Coalition is being pressed to acknowledge the gap between coal exit timelines and the speed of renewable deployment plus storage.

Where this fits

This is the cost and reliability problem made concrete. Australia has committed to a renewables-only path by law, which rules out nuclear despite its firm output and lowest lifecycle emissions. The result is a binary choice: pay for gas peaking plants to cover the gaps renewables cannot fill on calm, cold nights, or accept rolling outages and price spikes. Coal exits on schedule. Renewables are being built. But the gap between them is being filled by expensive, fossil fuel firming. This is the hidden cost of the renewables-only constraint.

What it means

Higher energy bills are locked in. Gas will be needed as the swing source for as long as the law forbids firm alternatives. Australia has no domestic battery manufacturing, no lithium refining at scale, and no sovereign supply chains for the solar panels and inverters that would replace coal's capacity factor. Importing firming from gas reserves Australia owns, versus importing panels and batteries from China and then importing dispatchable power from gas anyway, is the least-discussed trade-off in the energy transition. The choice to close coal faster than firm alternatives can be built is a choice to raise the cost of electricity and deepen reliance on gas, not a choice to avoid it.