Queensland households, businesses and industry are racing toward solar, wind and batteries, but the state government is driving in reverse.
By scrapping renewable energy targets, abandoning coal closure schedules and running state-owned coal stations past their shelf life, the government has injected massive risk into the market.
Investors can no longer predict when replacement power will be needed, choking off finance for new clean energy projects.
This reliance on coal actively punishes investment in clean energy. Because coal stations cannot quickly cycle on and off, they idle at minimum output during bright, sunny afternoons – flooding an oversupplied grid.
To prevent blackouts, the grid operator curtails or disconnects rooftop solar and wind.
Families that have invested in solar lose the electricity they generated, drawing power back from a coal-heavy grid instead. They pay twice: once for their own solar, and again to keep ageing coal on life support.
The political playbook is clear: cancel targets, erase end dates, protect old assets and starve new renewables of capital.
When the clean-energy pipeline inevitably dries up, manufacture outrage over the energy shortage you created to justify keeping coal online even longer.
It is a deliberate strategy to make renewable energy uninvestable.
Now, the same flawed logic threatens public transportation and the AI and data centre boom.
These facilities require massive amounts of power. That incoming demand should bankroll fresh generation, storage, and transmission grid infrastructure – not breathe artificial life into obsolete coal plants.
Queensland could leverage data centres for high-tech jobs and regional growth.
Instead, current policy guarantees higher power bills, weaker reliability, and stalled investment.
Fixing this requires closing a glaring federal loophole. The federal government is currently reviewing the Safeguard Mechanism – Australia’s primary tool for cutting industrial emissions.
Yet coal-fired power stations remain mysteriously exempt, letting the country’s biggest polluters dodge responsibility for their actual costs.
The Safeguard Mechanism must apply to all coal-fired generators based on their original closure dates.
If a plant operates past its deadline, the owner must use Australian Carbon Credit Units to cover the pollution.
This is not a sudden shutdown. It is a clear market signal to finance and build replacement power before we need it.
Queensland deserves an energy policy designed to succeed, not one engineered to fail.
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David McElrea is the chief executive officer of peak industry body, the Smart Energy Council.
