Gladstone Power Station

GBSAN Stanthorpe Today Article, November 2025

Gladstone, Queensland, Australia - Power House from Helicopter

The announcement by the private owners of Queensland’s largest coal fired power station could be shut down six years earlier than planned is a timely reminder of the economic cost of further delays in the transition to a clean, renewable energy future. The Gladstone power station (GPS) is now bumping up against its 50 year design life. The cost of keeping the aging power station going has prompted its owners to flag that it will now possibly shut in 2029 in the absence of some sort of tax payer funded subsidy. Over the last 5 years GPS has been offline due to breakdowns and unscheduled maintenance for an astronomical 4200 hours or in the vicinity of 50% of its operational time. The cost of keeping the aging plant going is growing exponentially. Failure to backfill GPS’s generation capacity with new capacity threatens the stability of the grid.

The key issue is that there is not yet enough renewable energy and battery capacity in the pipeline to soak up the power production shortfall when GPS closes. The state government’s preference seems to be keeping these aging power stations going for longer. But as is the case with GPS, the private owners including Rio Tinto will refuse to foot the bill meaning the taxpayer will have to fund the life extension. This will add significant costs to the price of electricity and due to a massive increase in maintenance and the persistent and increasing breakdowns will put pressure on the grid. At the same time in recent months, the state government has knocked back a number of wind and solar farm development applications.

The cost of new coal-fired generation is ridiculously expensive when compared to renewables and batteries and nuclear makes new coal-fired generation look cheap and won’t be available in Australia until mid-century if at all. Opposing renewables from an ideological standpoint will inevitably lead to grid instability and higher power prices. The early closure of GPS is a warning shot over the bows and we should take note. The state government has correctly amended the law to ensure communities hosting these developments will benefit from them. Having done that they should throw their support behind the development of renewables in the face of an aging and an increasingly costly and unreliable fleet of state owned coal-fired power stations.