According to the Australian Minister of Energy and Climate Change, nuclear energy has never been part of Australia’s energy mix because the country has abundant renewable energy resources.
“I’m not here to tell other countries what to do. Nuclear plays a role in the combination of many countries, but in Australia it never has,” Chris Bowen told CNBC on the sidelines of the G20 energy ministers meeting in Goa, India.
“No matter where you look, from our point of view, there are problems associated with nuclear energy,” he said, outlining possible problems with using nuclear energy.
In addition to being extremely expensive, it also generates a large amount of waste and is an inflexible source of energy, he told CNBC. Sri Jegarajah on Saturday.
Furthermore, Australia would start over from “worse than zero” because it never had a nuclear industry in the first place, he said.
The Liddell Power Station, one of Australia’s oldest coal-fired power plants, was decommissioned on 28 April 2023, after 52 years of operation.
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Australia is also on track to reduce its dependence on coal and increase its dependence on gas instead.
“Gas plays an important role in strengthening the grid as coal leaves the grid… We have a lot of negative prices during the day in Australia, however coal plants are shutting down,” he said, noting that gas-fired power plants are more flexible and can be switched on and off.
Nation closed one of its oldest coal plants in April and will suspend the operation of another in 2025.
“They’re not going to be replaced by coal-fired power, that’s not going to happen,” Bowen said. “It’s not about the economy, it’s not about the future, and emissions are terrible.”
Renewable energy is the way to go
The Australian minister said that in order to stay afloat, Australia would have to “double down” on investments in renewable energy, storage and transmission.
“We have abundant renewable energy… Vladimir Putin cannot turn off the sun or turn off the wind, [but] he can shut off the gas pipeline,” Bowen said, referring to the Russian president, who cut off gas supplies to Europe in retaliation for Western sanctions due to the gratuitous war in Ukraine.
“For those countries fortunate enough to have abundant renewable energy resources, tapping into those renewables, increasing their share of our energy mix and then exporting as much of it as possible in due time, is also critical to national security.”
Australia’s renewable energy sector has made steady improvements over the past few years.
Renewable energy will account for 35.9% of the country’s total electricity production in 2022, more than double from 2017’s 16.9%, according to a national report. Clean Energy Council.
A bigger push towards renewables has reduced coal demand. The report said that the share of coal power generation fell from 59.1% in 2021 to 54.6% in 2022, but gas production increased by 1.2% in 2022 from the previous year.
Wind turbines are seen in the hills around Lake George, located near the Australian capital Canberra on May 30, 2023.
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Bowen said Australia needed to invest more to hit its net zero targets and this could be done if each sector was looked at individually.
“Industry plans are important to Australia because each industry is so different,” he said. “We need… the government’s view on how this decarbonization might happen, so we know where to focus our investments.”
He said what the government could do was limited and needed investments from Australian businesses.
“I have been impressed by the level of support and engagement from Australian businesses – large and small, and from international investors.”
Asked about Australia’s goal to bring to the table at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai in November, Bowen said “This COP needs to be a step forward in the world’s ambitions.”
“We have a lot of work to do. And we will sit at the negotiating table with countries of good will to try to achieve the best possible outcome,” he added.
