The Minns cabinet is expected to decide within a fortnight whether it will spend potentially billions of dollars to keep Australia’s biggest coal-fired power station running for an extra two years to reduce the risk of blackouts.government would have had to pay Origin Energy as much as $3bn to keep just half of its 2,880-megawatt Eraring plant near Newcastle open for two years, former energy minister and treasurer Matt Kean said on Monday.
“Origin wanted us to take the full risk of the inputs and sell back [electricity] at a fixed cost. They’d take no risk,” he told Guardian Australia. “It was the worst deal ever.”for the Nine papers, said the $3bn figure had been updated prior to the March state election that was won by Labor. His successor as energy minister, Penny Sharpe, said she had not seen that figure and was “concerned that any figure has been bandied about”.
“The former energy minister is undermining his own work and the bipartisanship he enjoyed in delivering the