ARTICLES
New Coal doesn’t Stack Up (continued)
Spreading 10GW of construction over 20 years at 500MW per
year should therefore deliver 480 on-going local construction jobs
and 900 ongoing local operation jobs once all are built, and total
national direct employment of 2,400 and 3,200 in construction
and operations, respectively. “triangle of power”. Katter, never one to hold back, asked, “How
could any Government conceive of the stupidity like another
baseload coal-fired power station in North Queensland?”
But the job opportunities would not stop there. New grid
infrastructure will also be needed, for transmission line upgrades
and investments in storage such as batteries or pumped hydro.
The new electricity infrastructure could also tempt energy-hungry
industries to head north in search of cheaper operating costs. Matthew Stocks is a Research Fellow, ANU College of Engineering
and Computer Science.
Andrew Blakers is Professor of Engineering, Australian National
University.
Judging by these numbers, it’s a very good question.
This article was first published in ‘The Conversation’ on 27th
June, 2018. SEN and the Science Teachers’ Association of
NSW are grateful to ‘The Conversation’ for its generous policy
of encouraging the republishing of its many fine articles. We also
thank the authors, Matthew Stocks and Prof. Andrew Blakers, for
supplying this article, thereby supporting this policy.
One political party with a strong regional focus, Katter’s Australia
Party, does understand this. Bob Katter’s seat of Kennedy
contains two large renewable energy projects. Late in 2017, he
and the Federal shadow infrastructure minister Anthony Albanese
took a tour of renewables projects across far north Queensland’s
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