Business & Economy

Australia to end market intervention to ease energy crisis

Sydney, Australia, Jun 22 (EFE).- Australia announced Wednesday an end to its energy market intervention to ease an electricity crisis in the country’s east coast, home to a large population.

In a statement, Daniel Westerman, Australian Energy Market Operator CEO, said the operator would take a staged approach to lifting the market suspension.

“The first step is that at 4am tomorrow, we will allow the market to set the price again,” he said.

“The second step will be to completely lift the suspension,” he added.

The AEMO said that a clear improvement in market conditions had been observed since its decision to suspend the National Energy Market a week ago.

This includes 4,000 MW of generation returning from outages.

Last week, the operator took control of the country’s east coast power market amid a risk of massive blackouts in several states after several power plants closed down as they felt they could not cover the costs of electricity generation.

Australia, where many power plants run on coal and gas and have infrastructure and maintenance problems, has been hit by high energy prices as a result of the war in Ukraine amid a strong demand for electricity during the southern winter.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen told reporters in Sydney on Wednesday that the country needed to make faster progress towards a greener economy and a renewable energy system with more storage capacity.

The new Labor government led by Anthony Albanese, which took office on May 23 after nine years of Conservative rule, is seeking to turn climate and energy policy around by pushing for the adoption of renewable energy sources and achieving a 43 percent reduction in polluting emissions by 2030. EFE

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