Australia's energy minister has urged families in New South Wales - a country of about 8 million people - including Sydney's largest city - to turn off the lights in the face of an energy crisis.

Thus, according to foreign media, reports Telegrafi, Chris Bowen has called on residents not to use electricity for two hours every night if "they have another solution."

However, he added that he was "confident" that power outages could be avoided.

Such a demand comes after Australia's main wholesale electricity market was suspended due to rising prices.

Why is there a crisis?

Australia is one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and liquefied natural gas, but is struggling with an energy crisis since last month.

Three-quarters of the country's electricity is still produced using coal.

It has long been accused of not doing enough to reduce its emissions by investing in renewable resources.

In recent weeks, however, Australia has felt the impact of outages on coal supplies, outages at some coal-fired power plants and high global energy prices.

Also, floods earlier this year hit several coal mines in New South Wales and Queensland, while technical issues have reduced production at two mines supplying the largest coal market station in New South Wales.

As a result, about a quarter of Australia's coal-fired power generation capacity is currently out of service due to unexpected outages and scheduled maintenance.

These and other issues have helped raise wholesale energy prices to over A $ 300 (about € 200) per megawatt hour - the limit set by the market regulator, the Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo).

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