Libs pledge cheaper power bills with $330b nuclear plan
Australians are being promised cheaper power bills under a $330 billion nuclear energy plan unveiled by the federal Coalition.
Wind and solar would make up 49 per cent of Australia’s energy grid by 2050, with nuclear accounting for 38 per cent.
“This will make electricity reliable, it will make it more consistent [and] cheaper for Australians and it will help us decarbonise as a trading economy as we must,” Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said in Brisbane on Friday.
Coal and gas-fired power plants will stay open for longer under the plan, a move criticised by Labor as being bad for Australia’s carbon emissions and unreliable for the energy grid.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen said ageing coal-fired plants already face daily outages and extending them was “a recipe for blackouts”.
Unveiling the long-promised details of the Coalition’s plan on Friday, Dutton said the first of the seven publicly-owned nuclear plants would come into operation by the mid-2030s – although this timeline has been rubbished by some experts.
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Labor’s plan is to have the grid firmed by just over 80 per cent renewable energy by 2030.
This will increase to more than 90 per cent by 2050 with the rest made up of storage and gas.
Dutton said an excessive reliance on renewables was “going to cause a lot of grief to the country”.
Nuclear energy would provide the “always-on” power to back up renewables and lead to cheaper power bills in the long run, he claimed.
But a major report released ahead of Dutton’s costings found nuclear energy does not offer a good deal for Australia, while postponing coal power station closures would heighten the country’s carbon emissions in the medium term.
For the seventh straight year, the GenCost 2024-25 Report found renewable energy sources are the cheapest of any new-build electricity-generating technology.
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Nuclear energy generation would be 1½ to two times more expensive than large-scale solar, according to the analysis by the national science agency CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator.
Energy market operators would also need to establish new connection points to safely supply the national electricity grid, experts have said.
The Coalition’s plan was modelled by private sector consultancy Frontier Economics, which also cost Labor’s transition around $600 billion.
Bowen dismissed this number, saying the government’s plan would cost $122 billion, citing a forecast from the national energy grid operator.
The Coalition is pushing for an end to Australia’s nuclear ban but has faced opposition from states.
On Friday, Fortescue chairman Andrew Forrest said nuclear power didn’t stack up for Australian families or businesses.
“As our national science agency has shown, ‘firmed’ solar and wind are the cheapest new electricity options for all Australians,” he said.
“The cost of electricity generated on a grid dominated by firmed renewable energy in 2030 will be half what you would have to pay if it came from nuclear, CSIRO found.”
Forrest, a big player in the non-fossil fuels energy market, said that without continued action on “low-cost, high-efficiency renewable energy” Australians will be left with “pricier power and crumbling coal stations”.
-AAP
