1 week Ago By Nick O'Malley
The energy plan Peter Dutton revealed on Friday morning is even more radical than it appeared to be when he announced this year the opposition was embracing nuclear energy. Announcing costings crunched for the Coalition by Frontier Economics, Dutton said his plan would allow Australia to get to net zero emissions by 2050 at 44 per cent less in cost than the current government plan – a saving, he said, of $263 billion. To get to these figures, the costings report makes some fairly heroic assumptions about how quickly and cheaply nuclear power stations can be built, but also how much electricity Australians will need by 2050 .
In simple terms, Dutton predicts that Australia will need far less electricity in 2050 than the government is planning for, and he assumes it can save money by not building unnecessary power generation, storage and transmission infrastructure. This position puts the Coalition at odds not just with the government, but with a global effort to reduce emissions by electrifying economies and building renewable energy infrastructure to displace fossil fuels. Loading Dutton also insists the world is engaged in a race towards nuclear that Australia is missing out on.
“If we look at the international experience, in Asia, in North America, in Europe – all of these countries have recognised the fact, firstly, that there is no hope of achieving net zero by 2050 without nuclear in the system,” he said on Friday morning, echoing his repeated assertion that Australia is the only G20 country not to have nuclear or be in the process of acquiring it. In fact, according to the International Energy Association, 14 G20 nations have nuclear energy and two are considering it..
