Gold miner gets $1m for power plant it was going to build anyway
April 2016 – February 2019
The Coalition government’s emissions reduction fund gives $1 million to one of the world’s biggest gold miners to help pay for a fossil-fuel power plant the company would have built anyway.
South African mining company Gold Fields is receiving funding for a gas-fired station to power the Granny Smith mine in outback Western Australia. According to its annual reports, it has received $126,000 and expects to get about $1m over seven years.
To qualify to bid into the emissions reduction fund, projects are meant to deliver emissions cuts that would not have happened without public money. But a Gold Fields spokesman said it would have built the gas plant regardless of support from the fund.
Kelly O’Shanassy, the chief executive of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said the situation was beyond parody.
PS. The Granny Smith Goldfields recently announced that they will convert their energy to solar – no talk of grants from the Government, though…