INTHEBLACK July 2025 - Magazine - Page 26
F E AT U R E
“You are looking at individual parcels of land and trying to find
the delta. What will it cost to get that site to the higher land use,
beyond the minimum rehabilitation requirements?”
KELLIE CHARLESWORTH, ARUP
which recently vacated its Ultimo site ahead
of a second revitalisation project.
As the energy transition gains
momentum, governments across the
world are orchestrating the timing of the
switch to renewables to keep the lights on.
Concurrently, energy companies and asset
owners evaluate huge liabilities and the
high costs of rehabilitating sites, alongside
the priceless value of their social licences to
operate and future stewardship concerns.
Communities invariably are loud about
what happens to coal-fired power stations,
not least because they have provided ongoing
community employment for so long.
“There is nowhere near the required global
knowledge on coal-fire [power station]
repurposing yet,” says professor Bruce
Mountain, director of the Victoria Energy
Policy Centre.
The UK leads the way globally, both for
the fast closure of coal generation and
for the transformation of end-of-life power
plants, notes Mountain, who points out that
many early examples of coal-fired power
station transformations are in CBDs.
Urban areas bring the immediacy
of a dense population and a propensity
for tourists and transport infrastructure
delivering foot traffic, which all create
amenable conditions for museums, public
spaces and residential accommodation.
In Australia, where all remaining
coal-fired power stations are in the
regions, solutions look different.
Mountain summarises the current approach
as: “Clear the land, leave the transformer,
build a battery hub.”
Installing a big battery for renewable
energy storage is the obvious option.
There is logic in the trend now playing
out across advanced economies to effectively
swap out greenhouse gas-emitting energy
sources for decarbonising alternatives.
26 INTHEBLACK July 2025
FIND THE WAY FORWARD
Location determines the future
of a coal-fired power station site, says
Kellie Charlesworth, Australasian energy
transition leader at design and engineering
giant Arup.
The firm has created masterplans for
a range of power stations across the world.
Among them are Battersea and French
company ENGIE’s Hazelwood in
Australia’s Latrobe Valley. Recent Arup
clients include the UK’s last coal-fired
power station, Uniper’s Ratcliffe-on-Soar
(closed in September 2024), and private
investor-owned Greenspot’s
Wallerawang Power Station in central
New South Wales.
“What we’re exploring with clients
is the most appropriate, best and highest,
land use for every site,” says Charlesworth.
Outcomes are contingent on the existing
opportunities each site provides, including
infrastructure and skilled workforce, and
rely on the vision through the eyes of many
different stakeholders.
Governments look at how power
stations fit into regional economic
transformations and impose extensive
rehabilitation requirements. Energy
generators lean into decarbonisation
and renewable energy options.
Developers have more disparate
perspectives to owners for whom finding
other uses for these sites may be a
compensation for huge rehabilitation
costs, Charlesworth advises. She is intent
on seeing a change in the popular rhetoric
that positions these sites as “something
to get rid of ”.
Timing is important, too. Ideally the
reimagining or development of a
masterplan happens in synchronicity
with decommissioning and rehabilitation
requirements for sites.
