- The World’s largest coal port has announced it will now be powered entirely by renewable energy.
- The company hopes to decarbonise its business by 2040.
The Port of Newcastle has declared that its facility will run entirely on power derived from renewable energy resources. This announcement comes as coal power generation in Australia’s national electricity market dropped to an all-time low in the last three months of 2021.
Though the port continues to export an average of 165Mt of coal a year, the move is part of a plan to decarbonise the business by 2040 and increase the non-coal portion of its business so that coal only makes up half its revenue by 2030.
The port has signed a deal with Iberdrola, which operates the Bodangora windfarm near Dubbo in inland New South Wales, for a retail power purchase agreement that provides it with large scale generation certificates linked to the wind farm.
CEO Craig Carmody said the Port of Newcastle’s title as the largest coal port in the world “isn’t as wonderful as it used to be” and that change was necessary to avoid what happened in Newcastle, and the steel industry closed.
As part of its transition, the port has converted 97 per cent of its transportation media to electric vehicles and engaged in other infrastructure projects to decarbonise its operations.