The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, has accused the Coalition of using “the rightwing playbook of 2023 – populism, polarisation and post-truth politics” in making false claims about the potential for nuclear power in Australia.
Speaking on Tuesday, Bowen said the opposition’s suggestion the country could embrace the banned energy source to meet climate targets was the “latest attempt at deflection and distraction now that outright denial is less fashionable” and an attempt to “continue the culture climate wars in Australia”.
He said the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, and Coalition energy and climate spokesperson, Ted O’Brien, had made false claims about the role of nuclear energy in Canada, and been dishonest about the comparative costs of nuclear power and renewable energy in Australia.
“In doing so they are using the rightwing playbook of 2023 – populism, polarisation and post-truth politics. These are climate charlatans and it’s time for these games to end,” Bowen told a climate and energy summit hosted by the Australian Financial Review.
“If they are serious about proposing a nuclear solution for Australia, the simplistic bumper stickers and populist echo chamber has to come to an end. Show the Australian people your verified nuclear costings and your detailed plans about where the nuclear power plants will go.
“Dealing with the challenges and opportunities of decarbonising Australian energy, creating jobs and investments and managing this transition is a serious task … requiring serious people and serious plans. The government is providing those plans, the alternative government is not.”
O’Brien told the summit on Monday that Australia needed to consider nuclear energy, which was banned by the Howard government in 1998. He said the Albanese government had “wrongly defined the challenge of net zero by making it all about pouring more renewables on to the grid”.
“To put it candidly: no nuclear, no net zero,” he said.
The Coalition supports a slower exit from coal power, the most polluting source of electricity, and has argued small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) could be built on the site of coal generators to complement renewable energy and other technology.
SMRs do not currently exist, commercially. The CSIRO said they were in use at two sites, in Russia (on a barge) and China, and both had suffered delays and cost blowouts.
The International Atomic Energy Agency this year reported there were more than 80 SMR designs in development, but only some would be used for electricity generation, and their economic competitiveness was “still to be proven in practice”. The CSIRO found nuclear was the most expensive source of power generation available, and renewable energy the cheapest.
O’Brien told the AFR summit there could be at least a dozen SMR installations globally by the time Australia could start procuring nuclear reactors to connect to the grid – “say, in the first half of the 2030s”.
He said the Coalition would present an “alternative pathway” to the government before the next election that would include “more gas, and lots of it” and embracing carbon capture and storage, a technology that has not proven commercially viable in power generation. He said there should be more renewable energy “but an optimum amount, not a maximum”.
“If the government had correctly defined the challenge of net zero as reducing emissions, while accounting for issues of security, economics and the like, it would not be pursuing the suite of policies that it is,” he said.
The Albanese government has set a target of 82% of electricity coming from renewable energy by 2030, and made it central to meeting the country’s legislated climate target – a 43% cut by the end of decade compared to 2005 levels.
Scientists say Australia should be cutting emissions faster – by up to 75% by 2030 – to play its part in living up to the goals of the landmark Paris climate agreement.
The Australian Energy Market Operator’s integrated system plan – sometimes described as its blueprint for the optimal future grid – found the most likely scenario would involve running on 83% renewable energy by 2030 and 96% by 2040. It could be underpinned by a range of “firm” technology.
Bowen said the Coalition would have received the same expert economic and energy advice while in government that was now offered to Labor: that nuclear power was “too slow, too expensive, too out of sync with the competitive advantages in Australia”.
He said there was an urgent need to act, noting the world had just experienced the hottest July, August and September on record, and it was “crunch time” in the next seven years to cut emissions. He said lifting the nuclear ban would send mixed signals and “run the real risk of chilling investment in the firmed renewable energy we need to keep the lights on and get emissions down”.
The government announced on Tuesday a promised $2bn renewable hydrogen program was open for applications.
