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Will closing Australia’s biggest coal-fired power station early really cost thousands of jobs?
(The Guardian, 2 Mar 2022) If you follow the Institute of Public Affairs’s logic on job losses, a net zero target is bad for everyone working in renewables too
Closing Australia’s biggest coal-fired power plant would be an “Electric Shock”, the headline screamed, that would do almost nothing for the climate and cost thousands of jobs.
So said a page one story for Sydney’s Daily Telegraph last week on the supposed impact of a decision by Origin Energy to close its Eraring power station in 2025, seven years earlier than planned.
There were “10,000 workers in the firing line”, the story claimed, quoting a researcher at the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), Daniel Wild.
The IPA’s own research, Wild said, showed that the 10,000 jobs in the Hunter electorate would be “destroyed” by a target to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
So how did the IPA – a thinktank which does not reveal its funders but is known to have accepted at least $4.5m from mining magnate Gina Rinehart – come to those jobs numbers?
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