OPINION
I’m not saying Australia’s Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, is dumb, but if you want to keep him occupied, show him two shovels and tell him to take his pick. This is, after all, the guy who repeatedly asserts that wind and solar are the cheapest ways to generate electricity. He also touted a $90k electric ute with an effective range of about 150km as just the thing for busy tradies.
“Boofhead Bowen” is naturally the guy Anthony Albanese put in charge of wrecking — oops, “transitioning” — Australia’s energy infrastructure. Where he reads reports, but he clearly doesn’t understand them.
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has fired a new salvo in Australia’s energy wars, releasing government costings claiming that Peter Dutton’s proposal to convert coal-fired power sites into nuclear small modular reactors would cost $387bn.
Analysis by the Department of Climate Change and Energy says converting coal to nuclear – an idea floated by the Coalition – would cost up to $25,000 per taxpayer to replace retiring coal-fired plants with 21.3GW of nuclear generation.
Ooh, sounds costly… until you compare it to the cost of Bowen’s touted “Net Zero”.
As I reported for the BFD, Bowen’s own Net Zero Australia recently released a report estimating that the cost of his Net Zero plan would be $7-9 trillion.
So, a more accurate headline would be: Going Nuclear to Cost 1/20th of Renewables.
The government analysis, prepared to undermine Mr Dutton’s push that nuclear should be considered in the future energy mix, comes as the Coalition this week ramps up attacks on Labor’s “broken energy promises”.
So, Labor’s own analysis confirms that Australia could go fully nuclear and save over $7 trillion dollars on what Bowen’s “renewables” dream would cost.
Are these people really so stupid that they can’t even understand their own reports? Or do they just think the rest of us are so stupid that we won’t notice?
Because Australians are certainly noticing that Labor has egregiously failed to deliver on their 90-times-repeated promise to cut electricity bills.
Regional Australians are also noticing — and kicking up a bigger and bigger stink about — the wanton vandalism of the rural environment in order to pander to the delusions of inner-city Teal voters.
Mr Bowen, who has faced resistance from some regional industries and communities against Labor’s aggressive renewables push, recently conceded that lifting renewables in the grid to 82 per cent by 2030 was a “hard task”.
Not to say staggeringly expensive. On his own department’s figures, Australia would have to spend the equivalent of its military spending in WWI, every year, for the next forty years.
Writing for The Australian online, [Opposition climate change and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien said…] “Labor’s radical experiment of an electricity grid built almost entirely on wind and solar defies economics and engineering, and the scale and speed of its proposed rollout is unprecedented: 22,000 solar panels installed every day and 40 wind turbines every month until 2030, along with tens of thousands of kilometres of transmission lines,” Mr O’Brien wrote.
“To Labor’s alarm, its plan isn’t working. Renewables are being rolled out at half the pace envisaged and private sector investment has stalled: not one new renewable generation project reached final investment decision in the first two quarters of this year.
“Those most squarely in (Mr) Bowen’s way are residents of regional communities who are expected to bear the brunt of the economic, environmental and amenity compromises that Labor’s policy necessitates.”
The Australian
But, hey, as long as Teal voters in Double Bay and manufacturers in China are kept happy, that’s all that matters in Canberra.