If you were looking for a neat summation of the current state of the energy debate in Australia, the tug-of-war over the future of a retired brown coal power plant in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley would be a good place to start.
The old Morwell Power Station and briquette factory on the outskirts of the town of the same name was last week listed for protection by the Heritage Council of Victoria.
The former Energy Brix Power Station, which once supplied brown coal-fired electricity to the grid, was closed in 2014 – two years after receiving a $50 million federal government bailout package.
At the same time, the plant’s final operator went into liquidation.
The heritage listing was granted following a community-led campaign to see the old power station and briquette factory buildings preserved – despite them being run-down and riddled with asbestos – and turned into a sort of monument to fossil fuels.
According to the Latrobe Valley Express, the Heritage Council said the Committee believed the old buildings demonstrated the transformation of the Latrobe Valley into an industrial region for power and energy production, in accordance with post-World War II state government policy.
“… the Place is the earliest surviving large-scale power station designed to provide electricity to the state electricity network,” it said.
“The Committee also agrees with the [Heritage Victoria] Executive Director that the Place is of historical significance to the State as Morwell Power Station is also the earliest and only surviving site with integrated and remaining briquette factories.”
Moe resident Cheryl Wragg – who was behind the nomination – agrees.
“It’s the oldest coal-fired power station in the state, it’s the rarest in terms of engineering, it’s the only remnant of Victoria’s briquetting industry and it demonstrates the State Electricity Commission of Victoria, which changed the course of Victoria’s history,” she told ABC News.
But another group has some different plans for the site; plans that would not seek to enshrine it in the energy past, but to take it into the energy future – plans that will now have to negotiate a Heritage Listing.
These plans, put forward by an un-named private entity, propose to repurpose the site and integrate a large renewable energy and storage demonstration project.
Local solar and storage company Gippsland Solar has been working alongside that “entity” on developing those plans, which would tip more than $100 million into the local community and create hundreds of jobs. Many of them ongoing.
According to Gippsland Solar managing director Andrew McCarthy, the proposal is to knock down the Morwell power station – the building with the majority of the asbestos – keep and refurbish the Energy Brix factory, and create briquettes in a cleaner more environmentally sustainable way.
But the other key plank to the plan – which McCarthy says is quite well advanced – is to turn the site into a clean energy and battery storage hub.
So, instead of building a coal museum, creating a working example of the new energy future.
“Incorporating a large renewable energy and storage project into the existing electrical infrastructure, would provide a great use for this derelict and asbestos-ridden site,” McCarthy said.
“The suggestion was to put in up to a 30MW solar farm there, and potentially battery storage, as well as 1-2MW on the roof of the factory, and replace the broken windows with building integrated solar glass.
“That way, all of the asbestos gets cleaned up on site. And you have the huge benefit of installing megawatts of solar and battery storage, and supplying clean electricity via the same poles wires that feed in to the existing Latrobe Valley grid.
“The site has the most incredible electrical switching infrastructure,” he adds, noting that it was the chosen site for the 100 diesel generators the state and federal governments agreed to install as emergency back-up over the summer. So far, those generators have not been switched on.
“There’s already a fantastic demonstration of the existing coal-fired power infrastructure next door, at Power Works,” he added. “Using the Energy Brix site in this way would show the community what energy is going to look like in Australia, rather than what it used to be.”
McCarthy says another great advantage to the Latrobe Valley community of a new energy hub at the site would be giving all of those workers with “high voltage experience” another chance to keep doing something they’re really experienced at.
“It would be taking their existing skills and just adding another level of knowledge. This is what these guys have done for decades. It would be a wonderful opportunity for the Valley.”
But, he adds, “if the whole site is heritage listed and they can’t touch it, they will pull out of the deal.”
This is not a given, however. As the Latrobe Valley Express reported last week, the heritage listing means that any work to be done at the site into the future will require a permit, unless a permit exemption is granted.
It also noted that future uses of the site were on the agenda for many stakeholders at a public hearing last year, but that this was not considered part of the committee’s task.
“Submissions dealing with these matters have not been considered by the Committee in reaching its decisions,” the report says.
Whatever happens with the heritage listing, McCarthy says, “it would be a shame for the Latrobe Valley to miss this amazing opportunity.
“Let’s hope all parties can come together for a common sense outcome.”
Sophie is editor of One Step Off The Grid and deputy editor of its sister site, Renew Economy. Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.
This post was published on February 21, 2018 10:34 am
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View Comments
On the facts front: The site is already heritage listed. The determination was handed down last week after a submission process and consideration by the Heritage Council that lasted almost 12 months.
Legislation determines the matters the Heritage Council considers for nominated sites. It's not a laissez faire situation, nor were any stakeholders omitted. The subject of this story, the solar developer, didn't make a submission at any time last year into the process. I am not sure how the argument can be made that they missed out. If they did so, it was by their own volition.
There are many sites in the Latrobe Valley, including near the Morwell PS & BF, that could be developed as clean energy hubs. Hazelwood has a switchyard, is distant from residential neighborhoods, and is a preferable site for energy re-development. MPS & BF doesn't have to be destroyed to achieve a LV cleaner energy hub outcome.
HRL Energybrix got $183m, not $50m, from the Federal government in carbon tax mitigation assistance. Instead of spending it doing something useful at Morwell PS & Briquette Factories, the reason for the funding in the first place, they sacked the workforce and closed, getting more Fed. money to pay redundancies. They blew the carbon tax mitigation funds on, for example, buying a powerline clearance company that was bleeding financially, dragging them into insolvency. HRL Energybrix now has its eye on the $26m SECV site remediation fund to help pay its debts. HRL Energybrix has not had a track record of doing anything particularly useful or complex in the job creation and technology commercialisation line. It has been rather good, however, at getting its snout into the public funding trough and wasting precious public monies.
Demolishing Morwell power station will not 'get rid' of the asbestos but will turn a profit for HRL Energybrix to help pay off its debts. The quicker and cheaper the demolition, the more profit for creditors. At a Morwell meeting in early December, 2017 HRL Energybrix said it will not be removing all the asbestos and, rather, it has a responsibility to stick to its budget (ie SECV site fund) and make a return to creditors.
This is HRL Energybrix's motivation, not public health and safety.
Demolition will turn solid, stable, structural asbestos into highly dangerous, loose, (friable) asbestos in the process of moving it from the power station into a proposed onsite asbestos dump. This is extremely dangerous with very real risks of environmental emissions exposing workers and the local neighbourhood: residential, business, industrial, retail and recreation areas in Morwell. Emissions occurred during the demolition of Yallourn power stations during the 1990s: it is an extremely hazardous process.
Who's talking 'coal museum'? A little respect for the international engineering achievement represented at Morwell would be appreciated. The engineering of these plants is rare and extraordinary: as recognised by the industrial heritage experts in Heritage Victoria's submission to the Heritage Council.
In the 1940s, environmentalists of their day begged the State government, lobbied hard for Morwell PS & BF to be built because of statewide solid fuel and gas shortages causing Victorians to pillage our native forests for firewood. This facility and its central role in Victoria's energy story is extremely important and relevant to understanding how we got to the present. Destroying it out of greed, or ignorance, when we need to understand our energy history, would be an act of gross vandalism.
It might be a bit "old school", but has anybody thought about doing a proper benefit cost analysis of the two proposals? By "proper" I mean one that includes both tangible and intangible costs and benefits and an incidence analysis that clearly shows who gets the benefits and who bears the costs. I may be a sentimental old fool, but I can still fondly remember the olden days when such exercises were carried out in an objective and transparent manner by multi-disciplinary teams of people who were both qualified and experienced to do so and who were not pressured or coerced by vested interests to "cook the books". Those were the days!!...
Oh Paco...you're so retro!
Or do both... As has also been proposed.
On the facts front: The site is already heritage listed. The determination was handed down last week after a submission process and consideration by the Heritage Council that lasted almost 12 months.
Legislation determines the matters the Heritage Council considers for nominated sites. It's not a laissez faire situation, nor were any stakeholders omitted. The subject of this story, the solar developer, didn't make a submission at any time last year into the process. I am not sure how the argument can be made that they missed out. If they did so, it was by their own volition.
There are many sites in the Latrobe Valley, including near the Morwell PS & BF, that could be developed as cleanenergy hubs. Hazelwood has a switchyard, is distant from residential neighborhoods, and is a preferable site for energy re-development. MPS
& BF doesn't have to be destroyed to achieve a LV cleaner energy hub outcome.
HRL Energybrix got $183m, not $50m, from the Federal government in carbon tax mitigation assistance. Instead of spending it doing something useful at Morwell PS & Briquette Factories, the reason for the funding in the first place, they sacked the workforce and closed, getting more Fed. money to pay redundancies. They blew the
carbon tax mitigation funds on, for example, buying a powerline clearance company that was bleeding financially, dragging them into insolvency. HRL Energybrix now has its eye on the $26m SECV site remediation fund to help pay its debts. HRL Energybrix has not had a track record of doing anything particularly useful or complex in the job
creation and technology commercialisation line. It has been rather good, however, at getting its snout into the public funding trough and wasting precious public monies.
Demolishing Morwell power station will not 'get rid' of the asbestos but will turn a profit for HRL Energybrix to help pay off its debts. The quicker and cheaper the demolition, the more profit for creditors. At a Morwell meeting in early December, 2017 HRL Energybrix said it will not be removing all the asbestos and, rather, it has a responsibility to stick to its budget (ie SECV site fund) and make a return to creditors.
This is HRL Energybrix's motivation, not public health and safety.
Demolition will turn solid, stable, structural asbestos into highly dangerous,
loose, (friable) asbestos in the process of moving it from the power station into a proposed onsite asbestos dump. This is extremely dangerous with very real risks of environmental emissions exposing workers and the local neighbourhood: residential, business, industrial,retail and recreation areas in Morwell. Emissions occurred during the demolition of Yallourn power stations during the 1990s: it is an
extremely hazardous process.
Who's talking 'coal museum'? A little respect for the international engineering achievement representedat Morwell would be appreciated. The engineering of these plants is rare and extraordinary: as recognised by the industrial heritage experts in Heritage Victoria's submission to the Heritage Council.
Inthe 1940s, environmentalists of their day begged the State government, lobbied hard for Morwell PS & BF to be built because of statewide solid fuel and gas shortages causing Victorians to pillage our native forests for firewood. This facility and its central role in Victoria's energy story is extremely important and relevant to understanding how wegot to the present. Destroying it out of greed, or ignorance, when we need to understand our energy history, would be an act of gross vandalism.