Coal and gas support doubles in Victoria - The Australian

Victorian government support for coal and gas projects has doubled, according to reporting in The Australian. The article does not provide a specific dollar figure or the basis for the doubling claim, but signals a policy shift toward backing fossil-fuel infrastructure alongside the state's renewable build-out.

Where this fits

This is a reliability signal disguised as a policy reversal. When a state commits to doubling fossil support while nominally pursuing a renewables transition, it is admitting, without saying so, that weather-dependent generation cannot meet demand alone. Victoria's coal and gas fleet provides firm, dispatchable power that solar and wind cannot replace on cloudy, still days. The cost of the transition is not the cost of renewable capacity; it is the cost of keeping the old thermal fleet running while building new renewables that will underutilise it, then the cost of replacing it with battery storage and gas firming. That is why support is doubling: the grid needs the backup, and the backup is expensive to maintain.

What it means

Australia is building a hybrid system at high whole-system cost. Renewables are cheap per megawatt-hour, but the grid still needs firm power to be reliable. Rather than replace coal with nuclear, which is firm, low-emission, and long-lived, Australia is keeping coal running as a crutch while layering in renewables and gas. The honest energy policy would price reliability and emissions fairly, and ask whether a fleet of kept-alive coal plants is cheaper than the firm alternative that is currently banned by law. Until that question is asked, support for both renewables and fossil fuels will keep rising, and the true cost of the transition will remain hidden in the gap between them.