Institute of Public Affairs submission to the Inquiry into the Clean Economy Jobs Bill 2024 The legislating of net zero emissions will impose significant economic harm on regional Queensland

To estimate the price impact of the closures of the six coal-fired power stations, we performed a quantitative event analysis on the wholesale price implications of the closures of the ten coal-fired power plants decommissioned between the years 2010 and 2020. [...] Specifically, we measured the change in the average national wholesale price of electricity in the quarter immediately prior to and in the quarter immediately following the decommissioning of each station or group of stations decommissioned in the same year. [...] In each case where the data need to be aggregated, the pre-closure average price used as the basis of the price change calculation is the average nationwide price in the quarter immediately preceding the first plant closure of the year; the post-closure average price is the average nationwide price in the quarter immediately following the last plant closure of the year. [...] The point of comparison for the expected price increase is the average wholesale price in the five years following the closure of the Hazelwood coal-fired power station in the year 2017. [...] Almost as important is the increase of USD 28 per MWh of VRE to almost USD 50 per MWh of VRE, both at a share of 50% of wind and solar PV, as a function of the availability of flexibility in the system in the form of interconnections with neighbouring countries and flexible hydroelectric resources.