An education lesson for Catallaxy

Oh dear both Alan Moran and Judith Sloan jump the shark on electricity at Catallaxy.
Although both claim to be experts as every braggart at Catallaxy does they are woefully ignorant of the basics so let us help them out.  I should add I am no expert, I simply read a bit more then they do.

As we have see before Alan puts all his eggs in the Mineral councils basket when it comes to the coast of electricity on new coal powered stations.  Unfortunately no-one else believes the Minerals council's figures. The market certainly does not as NO investor shown any interest in a new coal powered station. They would be queueing up  bigtime if they did as would financiers to finance the project. They are nowhere to be seen either. Whoops

He also conveniently  ignores any externalities coal produces such as emissions or pollution.  He does this as he would be laughed out of court if he explicitly said this. without a price on carbon then a subsidy makes sense. Whoops

He also implies these subsidies have led to higher electricity prices. Wrong , Wrong, Wrong and Wrong  Whoops

He wants a new brown coal station ignoring all the social costs involved.  Whoops
 He also ignores the many breakdowns on coal powered stations over the summer. Whoops

Judith claims solar and wind powered stations have higher costs than a new coal station. Finkel says not so. Few disagree .Where does she get her figures from? Who knows Whoops
Scott Morrison obviously disagrees with her on information that has come to cabinet.

A couple of other points.
Alinta closed down the coal plant in South Australia. It was uneconomic, units frequently broke down in summer, servicing costs were high and getting higher. They wanted government help and did not get it.

AGL got the Liddell station for essentially nothing. They also got coal at below market prices  for the amount of time they own the  plant. This changes when the plant closes ( or changes hands).
The servicing costs are quite high and rising, Units break down in summer for reasons shown above.

No bid has been made and I very much doubt a bid will be made, Note this is vastly different to interest in the station. If Alinta do make a bid you can be sure it is with government sweeteners.
AGL have stated they will have electricity Liddlel currently generates covered when it closes.
Remember it takes a lot less time to build renewable station and therefore start generating electricity.