{"id":498179,"date":"2026-02-23T05:09:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T05:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/498179\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T05:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T05:09:09","slug":"counting-the-costs-of-australian-energy-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/498179\/","title":{"rendered":"Counting the costs of Australian energy policy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former Treasury official turned director of Macroeconomics Advisory, Stephen Anthony, is one of the few economists who understands the pitfalls of Australia\u2019s transition to an all-renewable energy future.<\/p>\n<p>Anthony <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailytelegraph.com.au\/news\/opinion\/stephen-anthony-were-pushing-power-uphill-in-the-transition\/news-story\/9341d780adc2d25812d26baaf10ec79b\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">penned an article<\/a> in the Daily Telegraph warning that the foolhardy push to close down Australia\u2019s stable, baseload coal power for intermittent, weather-dependent renewables will drive up costs and make Australia\u2019s energy system less reliable, ultimately driving industry offshore, reducing productivity growth, and harming living standards.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Anticipated-retirement-of-coal-plants.png\" width=\"610\" height=\"533\" alt=\"Planned coal closures\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Anthony says that to replace 23 GW of coal, Australia will need:<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Treasury official turned director of Macroeconomics Advisory, Stephen Anthony, is one of the few economists who understands&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164],"class_list":["post-498179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}