The announcement that the NSW government would extend the life of Australia’s biggest coal-fired power station was neither a surprise to energy observers in this country nor unique in a world struggling to at once battle climate change and keep pace with soaring energy demand.

In developed economies like Australia policymakers and engineers trying to shut down huge and complicated fossil fuel energy production and systems while deploying renewables are effectively rebuilding a clapped-out aeroplane around themselves while in flight, says the Grattan Institute’s energy lead, Tony Wood.

Around the world governments and engineers are trying to shut down fossil fuel energy systems, like the Hazelwood Power Station shown here, but it is proving tough.Credit: Joe Armao

Chris Bowen, the federal minister for Climate Change and Energy, sometimes says in speeches that globally this project is bigger than the entire industrial revolution, which a historian will tell you took around 80 years from 1760.

“We’ve got seven years between now and 2030, which is the key period for holding the world as close as possible to 1.5 degrees of warming,” he said during a speech about regional energy cooperation. “As people acknowledge, that 1.5 will be very, very difficult to achieve.

“We can’t stop trying because every small difference over 1.5 makes a massive difference to people who are relying on us to make a change.”

That was about a year ago.

Complicating this already extraordinary project even further is the fact that governments have come to realise they cannot survive the briefest interruption to energy supply. Indeed, even the whiff of it can snuff out investment.

This means that regulatory authorities impose the most exacting reliability standards on the system. Nationally, the so-called reliability standard is set by a panel that reports to the Australian Energy Market........

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