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Sun-soaked Australia’s lofty renewable energy ambitions were given a harsh reality check on Thursday, as looming electricity shortfalls delayed the long-awaited shutdown of the country’s largest coal-fired power plant. In many cases, nuclear makes sense for energy-deficient countries that had no domestic renewable options, such as Japan, energy analyst Tim Buckley told AFP. “Nuclear has no future in Australia,” he said. “Australia has not continuously built it, we have none of the skillset, none of the engineering, and none of the capacity for nuclear.” Read more

The new CSIRO GenCost 2023-24 report released this week makes for very interesting reading. In the report, the Australian Government’s independent scientific body subjects the nuclear barracking of Peter Dutton and Ted O’Brien to a comprehensive science and economics based, peer reviewed debunking. Peter Dutton has now pivoted to spruiking large scale nuclear reactors, having repeatedly thumped the table last year asserting in the face of all the available evidence that small modular reactors are the solution for Australia’s energy transition, with a similar reception from the CSIRO. Read more

As a new CSIRO report demonstrates once and for all that nuclear is not viable in Australia as a zero-emissions energy source, Tim Buckley explains that nuclear would lock in permanent, ultra-high energy prices for Australians. Read more

Tim Buckley breaks down the new CSIRO GenCost report out today which finds that a large-scale nuclear reactor would take at least until 2040 to build, cost around $17bn and produce power costing twice as much as firmed renewables, definitively showing that Peter Dutton’s nuclear fantasy is a complete furphy. Read more

Climate Energy Finance’s latest report, released this week, modelled China’s electricity system nationally at the annual level through to 2040, evaluating its likely GDP growth trajectory and the resulting energy demand growth, as well as the increased share and hence demand for electricity in the energy mix as China continues to pursue its ‘electrification of everything’ strategy of the last two decades. This is a wakeup call for Australia to accelerate the transition of its economy from its historic overdependence on coal exports and diversify its economic base. We should be pivoting now to deploy our natural advantages – our world-leading wealth of critical minerals and strategic metals – to produce value-added energy transition materials for export. Read more

The Federal Government last week announced a $1 billion investment in Australian solar manufacturing in the historic fossil fuel heartland of the Hunter Valley, the Solar Sunshot program. Its establishment at the Liddell coal power plant site is symbolic. The play is designed to boost a regional economy formerly dependent on fossil fuels, and help pivot the region and future workforce into the zero-emissions industries of the future, presenting a stark alternative to the Coalition’s “vision” of a nuclear reactor for every former coal generator site. Read more

The sudden enthusiasm of the LNP for nuclear energy is another divisive, cynical and damaging ploy to ignite Climate Wars 2.0 and disrupt and delay Australia’s accelerating renewables transition on behalf of the fossil fuel cartel. The LNP’s climate and energy luddites burned a decade when they were in office. We can’t afford more of the same policy lunacy. Read more

Tim Buckley, the director of the independent think tank Climate Energy Finance, said the opposition’s nuclear energy solution is about delay, which he views as the “new denialism.” “We’ve got this pure hypothetical political spin about waiting for 20 years for SMRs. We can’t afford to wait,” he told The Canberra Times. “We have a climate crisis. We have a cost-of-living crisis now. What this is all about is sowing disinformation and delay. It’s climate science denialism. Read more

The false dichotomy of distributed small-scale versus utility-scale renewables, coupled with the nuclear and CCS furphies, is the latest chapter in the Coalition’s efforts to stymie and repoliticise Australia’s energy transition. As Andrew Forrest succinctly put it at his National Press Club address this week: “If we swallow this new lie that we should stop the rollout of green energy and that nuclear energy will be our fairy godmother, we will be worse off again.” Read more

“It was not Loy Yang A tripping that caused the blackouts, it was the grid connected to Loy Yang that got taken out, and Loy Yang tripped because [it] couldn’t export the power [it was] generating,” explains energy analyst Tim Buckley. He says distributing the sites at which power is generated and stored and the number of transmission lines connected to these sites to end users would strengthen rather than weaken the grid. “It’s about having a spiderweb so if the one line or one string goes down, the grid overall doesn’t collapse.” Read more

Tim Buckley, working for Climate Energy Finance, reviews the likely phasing out of coal energy in Australia by 2038 and the rise of alternative energy sources. He insinuates that the potential for increased use of zero emissions technologies is significant, given the absence of nuclear power. Particularly, Tim singles out the future of rooftop solar in Australia, predicting that its capacity could quadruple in the next 27 years, exceeding the entire current installed capacity within the country. Read more

Our full page Canberra Times op ed with John Grimes, CEO of the Smart Energy Council, Rewiring Australia’s Dr Saul Griffiths, Blair Palese of the Climate Capital Forum, Dr John Hewson and Mara Bun: The prospect of nuclear power generation in Australia is now a live debate. There are a number of barriers that make nuclear unviable as a solution for Australia’s energy transition in a timeframe necessary to respond to the climate, energy and cost-of-living crisis. We need energy, decarbonisation and cost of living solutions this decade. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends a 50 per cent emissions reduction by 2030. As former Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel has noted, It is hard to imagine first operation of small modular reactor (SMR) technology before 2040. Read more