Extract from The Guardian
Back in the early years of the climate wars, the opponents of renewables would argue that coal-fired generation was cheaper and, in any event, global warming was a hoax. Those of us who took global warming seriously would argue that the additional cost of renewable energy was worth paying to save the planet.
Fast forward to today and we know that the cheapest form of new generation is wind and, above all, solar PV. The energy sector knows that and has zero interest in building new coal-fired power stations. And Australian families know that too, which is why we have the highest rate of rooftop solar PV in the world.
Nuclear generation, on the other hand, is the single most expensive form of new generation.
Today’s nuclear power announcement by Peter Dutton offers Australians the worst of all energy worlds. It is designed to delay and obstruct the rollout of renewables, it will increase, massively, the cost of electricity, and it will extend our reliance on burning coal.
So higher emissions and higher electricity costs!
We are blessed in Australia with ideal resources of sunshine, wind and land for renewable generation. That is our big comparative advantage. But what do we do when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow?
The answer is simple: we produce more electricity than we need when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing and store the excess to use when they are not. We have the technologies to do that: batteries for short-term storage of a few hours and pumped hydro for long-term storage. Both types of storage are being developed and built now.
For example, our own company, Upper Hunter Hydro, is developing two pumped hydro projects which will store enough electricity to generate 1,400MW for 10 hours - that’s a fraction of the storage in Snowy 2.0 but about the same generation capacity as a large coal-fired plant.
There are many other pumped hydro projects under development in Australia including two huge Queensland government projects, comparable to Snowy 2.0 in their scale.
The Coalition is planning to intervene in the market to constrain the cheapest form of new generation and use taxpayers’ money to build the most expensive form
Dutton has said that nuclear power is needed to support renewables. That is nonsense. A nuclear power plant runs at a consistent level throughout the day, it cannot be turned off when there is a glut of solar or wind power like a battery, hydro or even gas plant can.
If you want to support renewables, you need a flexible, despatchable, source of power that, ideally, absorbs surplus electricity during the day, and discharges it during the night. Thousands of Australians are already doing this right now with rooftop solar and home batteries.
A nuclear power plant would face the same economic challenges that coal-fired generators do now – for much of the day it would be unable to compete with solar and wind. During those times of excess supply the nuclear plant would add to the excess. That surplus electricity would be taken up by batteries and pumped hydro which would then compete with the nuclear plant during the night.
So the only way the economics of a nuclear plant could be assured in our market would be for the rollout of solar and wind to be constrained. That seems to be Dutton’s intention. In other words, the Coalition is planning to intervene in the market to constrain the cheapest form of new generation and use taxpayers’ money to build the most expensive form.
So the Coalition’s response to a cost-of-living crisis is to make itself the issue with the promise of higher electricity prices. It’s response to the loss of nine of its safest seats to independents committed to climate action is to delay the rollout of renewables and prolong the burning of coal – while we wait for a nuclear nirvana.
If the first episode of Australian climate wars was a tragedy, the second is an expensive and dangerous farce.
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