The Albanese government has gotten us into a diabolical hole with its energy policy. Let me try to explain.

Firstly you would have to concede that understanding our electricity system and the electricity market is quite a complex undertaking. I spent most of my professional career working as a manager in the electricity industry. Whilst I would readily concede that some of my knowledge is probably not current I would suspect I would have a greater understanding of those complexities than most people. But despite all the focus on the energy transition towards renewables orchestrated by the Albanese government and many of the state governments, I have little confidence that the governments and their bureaucrats working in this area are well-informed.

I recently shared with you a comment by journalist Chris Uhlman in The Weekend Australian who hits the nail squarely on the head.
There is another, terrifying possibility that would explain the reality gap; that the Minister, his staff, his department and all the states and territories that have been pushing ambitious renewables targets for a decade have no idea what they are doing.
That Australia’s political class and the bureaucrats who advise them are breathtakingly, stunningly energy illiterate. They have been ruled by virtue signalling and not by facts.

In effect, governments smitten by the zealotry of climate change have allowed ideology to triumph over physics and basic economics in promoting their virtue signalling.

When Trump assumes office in a couple of months he will pull out of the Paris agreement. This will mean that the world’s three largest emitters, China, India and the USA won’t be playing the game and they collectively account for almost 60% of the world’s emissions.

Meanwhile emissions minnow, Australia with barely one per cent of the world’s emissions is ruining its economy in the ridiculous belief that we will have a consequential effect on global warming!

Consider also the wonderful boondoggle China has orchestrated. China buys Australian coal to fuel its power stations and keep its energy costs low. Low energy costs assist in supporting its manufacturing base. As a result it can manufacture solar panels and wind turbines cheaply which it then exports to Australia. Australia uses these renewable energy sources to supplant its own coal-fired generators which in turn raises the cost of Australian energy and the killing off Australia’s own manufacturing industries.

Meanwhile China claims it is a developing nation. Under the rules of the dubious climate change regime that has been developed under the COP process, “developing” countries are entitled to compensation from the “developed” countries to aid their energy transition and to compensate for the effects of global warming.

It is indeed a breathtaking swindle!

To make matters worse, despite the billions of dollars that have been spent in support of developing a renewables Nirvana, we have hardly made a dent in our emissions.

So what is the government going to do? Well they’re going to buckle down and do even more of the same but expecting better outcomes. This is a strategy that Einstein labelled as “insanity”.

The Albanese government is so besotted with renewable energy that the Treasurer has announced that the mandate of the Future Fund will be changed to ensure it invests more in projects aligned with Labor’s policies including renewable energy.

Meanwhile at COP29 Australia has declined to be part of an agreement to share nuclear research with our AUKUS allies and other nations advancing their nuclear industries. The government said they declined the offer to join because Australia doesn’t have a domestic nuclear industry.

But this is wrong. Australia does have a nuclear industry. The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) has been active in research for many years utilising the Lucas Heights reactor.

However this pig-headed response was merely to reinforce the government’s intention to pursue renewable energy projects exclusively without being agnostic enough to at least weigh up nuclear options.

Does this mean that Albanese and Bowen don’t believe Australia will ever avail itself of nuclear technology?

At the previous COP meeting some thirty countries committed to increasing their nuclear generation capabilities in order to reduce their emissions. On what basis does Australia refuse to even explore this option?

The Labor government insists it is on the basis of cost and that nuclear power is the most expensive option to augment our generation capacity. But they make this case based on the incremental cost of generation which largely relates to the cost of fuel. A more sophisticated analysis of the total cost of renewable generation proves otherwise.

Frontier Economics analysis of the cost of the government’s renewable programme up until 2050, shows that the government underestimates this cost by 650 billion dollars! Having had some exposure to Frontier Economics during my career I would vouch that their costings are likely to be more realistic than those of the government.

The Albanese government refuses to accept two irrefutable facts,

1. Despite government promises to the contrary, its continuing obsession with renewable energy is increasing our electricity costs.
2. Those countries that have embraced nuclear generation have lower electricity costs than Australia.

How do you explain this Mr Bowen? The government’s much vaunted campaign of Future Made in Australia is effectively dead in the water if our high energy costs preclude investment in manufacturing.

In ignoring the opportunities provided by the development of nuclear generation technologies the Albanese government isn’t paying attention to recent developments around the world.

More than this, the renewable energy strategies that the government has promoted to save the world are beginning to have many adverse environmental impacts. The windfarms and solar arrays and the transmission lines they rely on to bring the renewable energy to consumers are having substantial impact on the productive use of agricultural land and incursions into the natural environment by destroying vital habitats.

Graham Lloyd, Environment Editor for The Australian reports the following recent nuclear commitments:

• Approval for the construction of two small scale molten salt nuclear reactors in the United States, the first fourth generation plants to be constructed for electricity generation in the USA.
• Last month Kairos signed an agreement with Google to deploy a US fleet of advanced nuclear projects totalling 500MW by 2035.
• Bill Gates has commissioned the construction of a sodium test reactor to be completed by 2030.

The Albanese government likes to portray nuclear generation as somehow risky and uneconomic.

The World Nuclear Association (WNA) reported there were in 2023 about 440 nuclear power reactors operating in some 32 countries. In addition the WNA reports that there are about 30 countries considering, planning or starting nuclear power programmes.

It is difficult to explain, in the face of this wide acceptance of nuclear power generation around the world, the Albanese government’s reticence to even consider the possibility of nuclear generation in Australia not even now but in the future.

It seems that for the government renewable energy has become not only a strategy to provide us with affordable, low emissions energy but a religious tenet that mustn’t be challenged. It is reminiscent of fundamentalist Islam and its insistence that apostasy must be punished with death!

The renewable energy zealots like to denigrate those who disagree with them as ignoring the science. I would submit that those who dismiss the prospect of nuclear energy playing a part in our energy future are the ones who are ignoring the science! In effect they have forgotten what the goal is (reducing emissions) and have instead substituted a new goal (maximising renewable energy).

Some European countries are already beating an undignified retreat from their idealistic renewable energy plans. I suspect that no matter what Chris Bowen might believe, it won’t be too long before Australia is forced to moderate our stance as well. The renewables idealism of the government has resulted in it celebrating setting impossible targets without regard to achieving useful outcomes.