Australia’s energy crisis would soon end if the nation rapidly expanded its coal assets, an advocate said.
Matt Canavan wants to ramp up as many coal projects as possible and open new power stations close to mine sites.
“The rest of the world is waking up and is turning back to reliable coal. Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and Austria are all turning coal-fired power stations back on. China and India have plans to increase their coal mining by 700 million tonnes a year. (Australia mines just over 400 million tonnes a year),” he said in an opinion article published by News Limited.
The Nationals deputy Senate leader also believes mining more domestic coal is cheaper than buying offshore alternatives that cost more.
“We have high-quality coal and, if we build power stations near our mines, we need not pay the high global prices for access to our coal,” he said according to the media outlet.
“Across the world there are 345 new coal-fired power stations being built. What is the argument against Australia building just a few to guarantee our energy supplies? … Coal would be the fastest, reliable energy option to market.”
Canavan estimates the environmental impact of opening one new coal-fired power station is negligible. Five million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year only increases global emissions by 0.014 per cent, and lifts the average international temperature by 0.0001 of a degree Celsius.
“Yet we are told a new coal-fired power station would worsen climate change and create more bushfires, floods and all manner of other natural disasters. These arguments are nonsensical yet go unchallenged in polite society,” he said.
“Eventually people will start blaming solar panels for all of this, as you can see from the cost-of-living protests growing around the world.”
Natural gas has become “relatively expensive” as a constant power source. However, nuclear energy has potential to replace coal in the distant future.
“Nuclear is something we should consider long-term but we cannot build them [power plants] in the time needed to replace our old coal-fired power fleet,” he said.
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