(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)
By Antony Currie
MELBOURNE, Dec 20 (Reuters Breakingviews) - For a great example of how not to pitch nuclear energy, look to Australia. The country's right-wing opposition parties head into next year's federal election claiming that adding seven atomic power stations to the main electricity system would decarbonise it for A$263 billion ($167 billion), or 44%, less than building the renewables-heavy grid the ruling Labor Party government favours. But the financials are misleading, and carbon emissions would mushroom.
That's because delaying the green transition Down Under is the central feature of the plan launched by the coalition of Liberal and National parties. The two have form. When in office between 2013 and 2022, they did little to replace the ageing, coal-dependent energy system. Their 2021 strategy for net-zero emissions by 2050 relied on questionable technology and modelled almost no progress for 15 years.
Their latest stab wastes even more time. It would require proactively reducing expected investments in wind and solar farms while waiting until the first nuclear power station came on line. That is generously pencilled in for 2036, with most of the rest following in the 2040s.
Western nuclear plants usually take around 15 years to complete, with the average expense overrun at 120%, per Oxford University professor Bent Flyvbjerg. The UK's Hinkley Point C could hit 20 years, and its cost has already ballooned to three times the A$10 billion per gigawatt underpinning the opposition coalition's calculations. Moreover, the current ban on nuclear power Down Under, which only parliament can overturn, complicates matters.
In the interim, the country would have to rely on increasingly unreliable coal-fired power stations for years longer than expected - probably with taxpayer support. The fuel's volatile price has already been pushing up Australians' energy bills.
The nuclear plan also envisages some 40% less energy generation capacity than Labor's preferred scenario, implying a grid that couldn't support enough electric vehicles. Under that scenario, the extra petrol and diesel, plus the additional coal burned would produce an extra 1.7 billion tons of carbon, based on estimates from Superpower Institute director Simon Holmes à Court and Dylan McConnell at the University of New South Wales. That's equivalent to almost four years of the country's overall emissions.
Nuclear power may well have a role to play in decarbonising some economies. But the Australian opposition's proposal is a radioactive play that would leave the country worse off.
CONTEXT NEWS
The Australian federal political opposition on Dec. 13 released a key part of its energy and climate policy ahead of a general election due to be held by May 2025.
The policy assumes the closure of most coal-fired power plants will be delayed by up to 15 years. It also assumes investment in renewable energy systems will slow and that seven nuclear power plants, currently illegal in the country, will come into operation between 2035 and 2051.
The opposition - a coalition of the Liberal and National parties - argues the delays and slower pace of investment mean its plan will cost A$331 billion ($211 billion) between 2025 and 2051, just over $100 billion less than a somewhat comparable scenario under a potential Labor government plan and $263 billion less than a more ambitious plan.
The boss of consulting firm Frontier Economics, Danny Price, produced the report.
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(Editing by Robyn Mak and Ujjaini Dutta)
((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on antony.currie@thomsonreuters.com))
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