By Nick Toscano
Power giant AGL is exploring plans to start making solar cables and recycling solar panels at the site of two retiring coal-fired power stations in NSW, as it continues to shun the Coalition’s campaign for its precinct to house a nuclear reactor instead.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has reignited Australia’s long-running climate wars with strident criticism of the government’s renewable energy targets and a push to deploy seven nuclear plants at the sites of coal-fired power stations across the country, including at AGL’s decommissioned Liddell generator in the NSW Upper Hunter.
AGL is planning to turn the site of its shuttered Liddell coal-fired power station into a low-carbon industrial energy hub.Credit: Nick Moir
However, AGL, the largest Australian power supplier, has ruled out taking part in Dutton’s nuclear push. It is instead pressing ahead with long-term plans to transform its legacy coal sites into low-carbon industrial energy “hubs”, including renewable energy, grid-scale batteries and manufacturing operations for green technologies that could help reduce Australia’s emissions.
On Tuesday, the company said it had signed a deal with Melbourne-based solar recycling company Elecsome to assess the feasibility of building plants to recycle end-of-life solar panels and make solar cables at its Hunter Energy Hub, which will span the sites of Liddell and AGL’s neighbouring Bayswater coal-fired generator, which is due to retire no later than 2033.
Travis Hughes, AGL’s general manager of energy hubs, said the vision for the Hunter Energy Hub was starting to take shape as more companies across the renewable energy value chain struck deals with AGL to collaborate on opportunities for the precinct.
“Since the closure of Liddell Power Station one year ago, we have signed memorandums of understanding that could bring battery recycling with renewable metals and solar panel manufacturing with SunDrive to the Hunter Energy Hub,” Hughes said. “Today, we add solar panel recycling and solar cable manufacturing to that list of partners.”
Dutton’s push for Australia to adopt nuclear power has been met with resistance from energy experts, state governments, and the owners of the coal-fired power sites that have been targeted for nuclear development.
The opposition leader has threatened to use Commonwealth compulsory acquisition powers to acquire the coal sites needed.
AGL, the owner of two locations earmarked to house the Coalition’s proposed reactors – Victoria’s Loy Yang A coal-fired power station and NSW’s Liddell – has ruled out supporting nuclear energy at its sites and warns the debate risks derailing critical investment in the clean energy transition.
“There is no viable schedule for the regulation or development of nuclear energy in Australia, and the cost, build time and public opinion are all prohibitive,” AGL chief executive Damien Nicks said in March.
“AGL is already developing our coal and gas power station sites into low-emissions industrial energy hubs ... nuclear energy is not a part of these plans.”
On Tuesday, AGL said its partnerships to assess opportunities for the energy hub had the potential to make a “significant contribution to the economy of the Upper Hunter by creating new jobs in the renewable energy sector”.
If AGL and Elecsome determine feasibility of the proposed recycling and manufacturing plants at the Hunter Energy Hub, they could generate 20 jobs during the two-year construction phase, and 50 jobs when fully operational, the companies said.
The Hunter plant would be Elecsome’s first commercial-scale solar panel recycling facility in NSW and is expected to upcycle up to 500,000 residential and grid-scale solar panels a year, the companies said. Elecsome already operates a plant in Melbourne, where it transforms old solar panels to new products used in construction and manufacturing.
Elecsome has also developed a patented technology to use the glass that makes up more than 70 per cent of a solar panel to create “SolarCrete” – a pre-mixed concrete that can be used in construction activities such as for driveways and footpaths. This product will also be included in the feasibility study at the Hunter site.
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