Quit Coal

Quit Coal is a Melbourne-based collective which campaigns against expansion of the coal industry in Victoria. We believe this is important because building new coal infrastructure locks in decades of dirty, old technology, when we should be moving towards clean, renewable energy.

The collective began in 2009 with the Switch off Hazelwood, Switch on Renewables campaign, which protested against continued government support of Hazelwood Power Station in the La Trobe Valley (the least carbon efficient power station in the developed world).

This grassroots campaign, supported by Greenpeace, Environment Victoria, the Greens and the Australian Conservation Foundation, organised community rallies in 2009 and 2010 which incorporated a range of tactics from mass civil disobedience to building the world's largest human-made mock solar thermal plant, and forced the Brumby government to commit to Hazelwood's closure (although the issue is still a hot topic, with Gillard not committing to a deadline for Hazelwood's closure).

In 2011 the group announced Stop HRL, a campaign against the company HRL, a private company which plans to build a 600MW coal-fired power station in the La Trobe Valley. This plant would be the first coal-fired power station to be built in Victoria for twenty years. The project is currently being challenged in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal by Environment Victoria, Doctors for the Environment Australia, Locals Into the Victoria's Environment, and a Victorian citizen. More recently the group has been supporting the strong local community campaign against Mantle Mining's plans to build an open cut brown coal mine in Bacchus Marsh.

Our campaigns inform the broader Victorian community about plans for coal expansion in Victoria, and pressure government to stop investing in new coal projects at a time when we have the technological capacity to move to 100% renewable energy. We incorporate a range of strategies, including Peaceful Direct Action, because we believe that laws which allow new coal infrastructure to be built in Australia are ruining the environment and endangering the lives of future generations.

In November 2011 Quit Coal decided to officially become a part of Friends of the Earth Melbourne http://www.melbourne.foe.org.au/ and now operates as a FoE collective.

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