An artist's impression of the Neerabup power station.
It might have its feet firmly in the green energy camp, but the owner of WA's latest major power station has weighed in to the climate change debate with some stinging criticism.
ERM is Australia's largest private electricity generator, with its gas-fired stations' output accounting for about 4 per cent of the nation's generating capacity.
Its two projects in WA are the 330MW Neerabup station, about 30km north of Perth, and a 300MW station at Kwinana.
Company founder and executive chairman Trevor St Baker has been a strident critic of the Federal Government's proposed emissions trading scheme.
As it stands, the ETS now looks in doubt after Tony Abbott rolled Malcolm Turnbull for the Liberal leadership on Tuesday.
In WA to officially open Neerabup today, Mr St Baker said the Department of Energy had not been listened to by the Government, who instead let the Department of Climate Change run the ETS agenda.
"(The Government needs) to listen to the biggest investors in the sector," he said.
"In 2050 one-third of all existing electricity generators will be dead ducks."
It would be better to let coal-fired stations run their course for a fixed period, say 35 years, then "give them a bit of a tax", Mr St Baker said.
There also needed to be more incentives to promote gas-fired power stations nationally.
While gas is the power generator of choice in WA, only Queensland has a compulsory scheme. In the Sunshine State, 13 per cent of all power in the coal stronghold must be sourced from gas-fired generation.
The stance has seen ERM at odds with the electricity generation industry peak body, the National Generators Forum.
Mr St Baker's son, Phillip, is the managing director of ERM.
He is bullish about the company's prospects. ERM has built about half of Australia's new generating capacity in the past five years and is on track to build about one-third of it in the next five years.
"We hope we can get that up to three-quarters," Phillip St Baker said.
A second station at Neerabup - of the same size as the present one - is among the projects on the cards.
ERM is also a smallish-scale gas prospector, including a project in the Perth basin at Gingin West, while it is developing, in conjunction with German giant Siemens, a world-first gas-backed solar thermal project in both Queensland and NSW.
That project would run on gas, but output would be boosted by up to 20 per cent by solar energy.
Phillip St Baker said the potential for similar projects in the Pilbara - with its base of large energy users - in the future was immense.
Meanwhile, Commonwealth and State authorities yesterday announced they would not renew a prospecting retention lease for the North West Shelf in its project area.
The decision means the Shelf has one year to apply for a production license, and another five years to start petroleum recovery operations for the Dixon prospect.
Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson said governments had "an obligation to unlock the wealth of Australia's vast petroleum resources for the benefit of all Australians".
"The challenge we face is to ensure the national interest is aligned with the commercial interests of investors," he said.
More than 40 per cent of offshore gas titles were locked up in retention leases last year, up from 29 per cent in 2000 and 4 per cent in 1990, Mr Ferguson said.
Nine leases in the Browse Basin were renewed. Those are held by most of the Shelf partners.
But the renewal comes with a catch - the partners, who are at odds over how best to develop the Browse project, have four months to agree on the way to develop it and three years to come up with a final development decision.
