Dutton nuclear project a ‘scam’ and recipe for blackouts, says Bowen

Federal Energy and Climate Minister Chris Bowen has blasted the Federal Coalition’s nuclear plans, describing them as a recipe for power outages and a “scam”, and expressed astonishment at the hypothesis by Peter Dutton of a network that would consume 40% less energy than is the case now.

Dutton’s nuclear costs – revealed last Friday – and some of his key assumptions have been widely dismissed, even mocked, by the energy industry, although the proposal has garnered support from some with close ties to the fuels industry fossils.

The reason is the Coalition’s focus on extending the life of the country’s aging coal-fired electricity generators, increasing reliance on gas, and the implications for renewable energy , which will largely be stopped in their tracks, and the climate objectives, which will be exceeded. and ignored.

The Coalition says it can have the first nuclear power plant operating by the mid-2030s – a goal most in the industry find laughable. But its own modeling confirms that most of the planned 14 GW will not be delivered until the mid-2040s, meaning it will have to run aging coal generators for another two decades.

“It’s a recipe for power outages and unreliability,” Bowen says in the latest episode of Renew Economy’s weekly Energy Insiders podcast. “By making the coal assets sweat longer, I mean, these coal power plants are not getting any younger. None of us are.

“Just this week we had 3.4 gigawatts of coal on the NEM (national electricity market, the main grid) and three gigawatts of that were unplanned, i.e. outages, unexpected outages, three gigawatts this week.

“Now the grid is doing well, even though it’s very hot, but you’d still rather not have three gigawatts producing, and it’s only going to get worse the more you depend on coal.”

Indeed, Australia’s energy market operator has made it clear, and even coal plant owners agree, that the biggest threat to grid reliability is unforeseen and sudden losses from large generators fossil fuels, particularly coal.

Over the past two weeks, AEMO has managed heatwaves and multiple outages and turned to greater demand and supply flexibility to help manage the situation, including putting several large standby batteries – a protocol it now uses when the network faces high demands. , and demand is low.

It is this focus on flexibility that undermines the case for existing baseload power plants, let alone new, even larger, “always on” ones.

Many analysts say there simply isn’t enough room in the network. In a document released this week, Tesla said there was room for as little as 1 GW of “base load” without a severe reduction in home solar.

The Coalition, however, says it is determined to restart, but its cost estimates have also come under heavy criticism – both over the supposed price and timetable for building a new nuclear power plant from from zero, but also on its assumption that electricity demand would fall more than 40 percent below forecasts.

In the energy world, it is generally assumed that less primary energy will be used in an electrified world. But this is because inefficient fossil fuel motors and generators (in cars, homes and on the grid) are being replaced by more efficient inverter-based technologies – wind, solar and battery storage.

This means that less energy is needed overall (because around two-thirds of energy from fossil fuels is lost as waste heat), but more electricity will be produced on global grids. The Coalition’s modeling turns a blind eye to this development and assumes that electrification is not happening and that fossil fuels are still burned in huge quantities.

“I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about how they (the Coalition) could try to make nuclear cheaper, and I have a confession to make,” Bowen told Energy Insiders.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that they would just assume that we need less electricity. So they said we would need 40% less electricity than AEMO’s Step Change scenario.

“And guess what? Who would have thought that if you produced 40% less electricity, it would be about 40% cheaper. I mean, who would have thought it? I mean, what a scam. We all know that nuclear is the most expensive. They had to find a way to pretend that wasn’t the case.

On Labour’s own policy, Bowen says the capacity investment programme, which last week revealed the winners of the first major generation tender, is working better than expected, with 6.4GW of capacity allocated instead of the 6 GW planned, and all represent new projects. construction of which has not yet started.

“It works better than I thought,” Bowen says.

“And that’s a very encouraging thing.” The value and quality of the projects we deliver means we can award more than we bargained for.

“No, I will not give bidders the opportunity to know our reserve price. That’s not how an auction works, but (the result) meant that I could also announce for the next round that we were going to target, in effect, 10 gigawatts, four gigawatts of dispatchable and six gigawatts of generation for tenders three and four. .

“This is huge, and it really means these projects will get into the planning system and into the emos connection process more quickly and help us achieve our goal.”

“The only disappointing thing about this round, from my perspective, was the lack of projects we could award in Tasmania.

“I would like to see more Tasmanian projects come forward, and…we have provided feedback to Tasmanian bidders on this…. we need to ensure we can launch more projects in Tasmania in the future.

However, Bowen says there is still more to do and he hopes – if Labor is re-elected and remains in the portfolio – to undertake more reforms.

“We’ve made good progress in the first three years, but not enough yet, in my opinion, and it really takes a long time in work like this to, you know, consolidate the reforms and make them work properly . , and keep it going and learn as you go,” he says.

“Obviously, you know, you just get, you just become more proficient on things like CIS, etc., as you build the experience collectively within the department.

“I would say that the next term… if we get one, as I hope and expect that we will, it’s a combination of consolidation, so a whole bunch of things that are well advanced need to be simply be anchored and consolidated, including the CIS, including the new vehicle efficiency standards which… have been in the too-hard bin for so long, but which will not actually come in until January 1st.

“So, to be honest, they haven’t made an impact yet, but they will. The same is true with safeguards reforms, again, important and difficult to implement, but they need to be put in place and pursued and so the stakes are enormous.

“And then there’s the next question?” And of course we will go through the process from the 2035 target, the advice from the climate change authority to the sector plans. This whole process is ongoing, but I really see it now as a sort of continuum.

“After making good progress in the first two or three years, I was able to build on that, consolidate it, continue it. And it’s just unthinkable to me that we could, you know, having made such progress, stop, destroy some of it, and go back, as the alternative would suggest.

To hear more from Bowen on these projects and more, you can listen to the full episode here once it’s released later today.