Eraring shuts in 2029 and NSW has no plan for what replaces it: Shelton
Family First Party
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
26 August 2026
Eraring shuts in 2029 and NSW has no plan for what replaces it: Shelton
The Australian Energy Market Operator has brought forward the date NSW breaches its electricity reliability benchmark by three years, to 2030-31, as data centre demand collides with an ageing and increasingly unreliable coal fleet.
Family First National Director Lyle Shelton said the warning confirms what the party has argued since Eraring’s closure was announced: NSW is retiring firm generation on an ideological timetable while demand climbs.
Origin Energy’s 2.9 gigawatt Eraring power station, the largest in the country, is scheduled to close in April 2029. AEMO expects data centres across the national market to lift consumption from about 5 terawatt hours today to 34 terawatt hours by 2035-36, and forecasts business electricity demand rising 60 per cent, from 143.3 terawatt hours to 221.5 terawatt hours over the same decade.
“NSW switches off its biggest power station in April 2029, and AEMO has just told us the state runs short of reliable supply just over a year after that,” Mr Shelton said.
“Eleven data centre projects worth 5.4 gigawatts are already in the connection queue. AEMO has lifted its 2035-36 household consumption forecast by 19 per cent in a single year. The demand is real, it is arriving now, and the response from Chris Bowen is to build the same things faster.”
Mr Shelton said families were already paying for the transmission build that was meant to make the transition cheap. HumeLink was costed at $1.3 billion and is now approaching $4.9 billion, with the overrun recovered through household and small business bills.
““Ideology is not a plan. Hope is not a plan. Families opening a quarterly power bill they cannot pay need a plan, and Family First has one,” Mr Shelton said.
Family First’s energy policy commits to:
- Ending net zero targets and withdrawing from the Paris Agreement
- Halting renewable energy subsidies and the transmission spending they require
- Keeping Eraring, Bayswater and Vales Point running for as long as they can generate safely
- Unlocking NSW gas reserves to supply the east coast market
- Greenlighting nuclear power so NSW has firm generation for the second half of the century.
“Every serious warning AEMO issues gets answered with another subsidy and another set of towers through somebody’s farm,” Mr Shelton said. “Keep the coal stations open, turn the gas on, and let the nuclear industry start. That keeps the lights on in Sydney and it keeps the bill in reach of a family in Penrith.”
– ENDS –
MEDIA ENQUIRIES:
Lyle Shelton, Family First National Director
Email: [email protected]
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Family First's NSW Legislative Council candidate Lyle Shelton.
