Why the shutdown of AGL’s coal-fired plants will probably happen even sooner than power giant says

When AGL, Australia's biggest electricity generator, announced plans on Thursday to accelerate the timetable to close its two largest coal-fired power plants, environmental groups complained the pace wasn't fast enough.

Out would go Bayswater, AGL's 2640-megawatt black coal-fired power plant in New South Wales's Hunter Valley, between 2030 and 2033, rather than 2035 as previously flagged. And by 2045, the 2210MW Loy Yang A brown coal-fired station in Victoria would follow, compared with a 2048 schedule, the company said.

That at least was AGL's objective, Graeme Hunt, the company's chief executive told investors, adding with a flourish: "the path to net zero [emissions] will be the defining challenge of our era. Companies that don't adapt, that don't innovate, and don't set themselves on this path will be left behind".

Greenpeace Australia dismissed the new dates as a "token effort", noting the two plants at current pollution rates add about 35m tonnes of CO2 yearly, or about 7% of the nation's total. The Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility said the updated plan was "next to meaningless for these crumbling assets" given Bayswater will be 48 years old by 2033 and in 2045, Loy Yang A will be 61 years old".

The latter point was perhaps the most germaine. The Australian Energy Market Operator is already preparing scenarios for all brown coal plants and two-thirds of black coal ones to disappear from the grid by 2032.

That's about a decade earlier than AGL is now forecasting for Loy Yang A.

"[Thursday] will not be the last time the closure of a fossil fuel generator is brought forward," said Kane Thornton, chief executive of the Clean Energy Council, which counts AGL among its almost 1,000 members.