Sydney (Australia).- The AGL company, the largest electricity generator and the main source of polluting emissions in Australia, closed its Liddell facilities on Friday, the oldest coal-fired power generation plant in the oceanic country.
Shift to a cleaner future
“Liddell has finally reached the end of its technical life and the time has come for the station to be closed down safely and respectfully to join us in changing for a cleaner future,” AGL chief executive Damien Nicks said in a statement. posted today.
“The world is changing, so is AGL,” Nicks said about the closure of the plant, opened in 1971 in the Upper Hunter area (about 250 kilometers from the city of Sydney) to provide energy to around a million homes and businesses. .
AGL plans to convert the Liddell facility – whose workers have been transferred to other departments or received severance pay – into a renewable energy industrial hub, which will include building a 500-megawatt grid-scale battery.
Also, around 90% of the materials from the demolition of Liddell, which will begin in 2024, will be recycled, including some 70,000 tons of steel, according to the statement.
Renewable energy
The closure of Liddell is part of AGL’s plans to transform all of its fossil-powered centers into renewable energy facilities in order to reduce its polluting emissions by some 8 million tons per year, which is equivalent to 5% of Australian power sector emissions in 2021, Nicks said.
AGL is considered the largest polluter in Australia, according to data from the portal specialized in renewable energy Renew Economy, and only in the fiscal year 2021-22 the company emitted some 39.5 million tons of polluting gases.
The measures announced by the company are in line with the shift in Australia’s energy policy following the election in May 2022 of Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has vowed to turn his country into a renewable energy powerhouse to fight against climate crisis. EFEgreen
2023-04-28 16:41:20
#Australia #bets #cleaner #future #abandons #coal
