Antinuclear

South Australian govt makes a change- to purchase 75 per cent of its long-term electricity needs

SA Government to purchase 75 per cent of its long-term electricity needs, ABC News, 7 Sept 16 By Nick Harmsen and staff The South Australian Government says it will launch a tender to buy 75 per cent of its long-term electricity needs in an effort to increase competition.

SA has been hit hard by spiralling electricity costs over recent years and the Government wants to introduce a new competitor to the market.

Premier Jay Weatherill said current rules allowed private electricity companies to drive “prices higher by withholding supply”. “A small number of energy suppliers in South Australia have too much power,” he said. “If we increase competition, we will put the power back into the hands of consumers.”

South Australia’s electricity provider, the Electricity Trust of South Australia, was privatised in 1999.It changed its name to SA Power Networks in 2012……..

Carbon emissions scheme on the cards The SA Government also wants to “explore” an Emissions Intensity Scheme (EIS) that would trade credits between energy companies at a national level…….

“[This] means no coal-fired power generation and the only way you’re going to do that is through an emissions trading scheme or an emissions intensity scheme,” he said.

Independent senator for SA Nick Xenophon said an EIS was a “breakthrough” that would increase power reliability, reduce costs and bring about good environmental outcomes. He said that under an EIS, “dirty generators” that emit above a baseline emission rate would have to pay for the pollution while those below it would be credited.

Senator Xenophon said he proposed it at a federal level with the then opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull in 2009. “It seems that after seven long years of skyrocketing power prices that the ‘mongrel scheme’ that I proposed with Malcolm Turnbull has now become the ‘top dog’,” he said.

Yesterday, Port Augusta residents lobbied Mr Weatherill to commit to purchase the power from a proposed solar thermal project in the state’s north.

Mr Weatherill said the tender would not specify which power plant technology should be used…….http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-08/sa-government-to-purchase-75pc-of-electricity-needs/7825852

September 9, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | energy, South Australia