Energy Minister Chris Bowen has criticised the Liberal-National Coalition’s energy policies, warning it will result in a 49 percent shortfall in electricity supply by 2035.
Bowen’s remarks come from an opinion piece discussing the opposition’s proposed shift towards nuclear power and pausing new renewable investment.
He said Australia’s electricity grid operated on a complex system of expert decision-making and long-term planning.
He argues that the Coalition’s plan, which he says, involves defunding critical transmission infrastructure and freezing renewable energy investments, will undermine the grid’s stability, leaving Australians at risk of frequent power shortages.
“The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) sets strict reliability standards for generators and networks. Even if AEMO predicts a small 0.002 percent gap between supply and demand, it raises concerns of a potential breach,” says Bowen in his piece.
While such warnings have not yet led to actual breaches, Bowen notes that “climate sceptics” have seized these warnings to criticise the government’s renewable energy transition.
Bowen has timed his piece two days before Dutton is expected to speak about his nuclear plans before the Committee For Economic Development of Australia.
The event, scheduled for Sept. 23 is called: “A nuclear-powered Australia—could it work?”
Dutton has been bullish about his nuclear plans.
He proposes to build seven nuclear plants on the sites of existing coal plants, including two small modular reactors and five traditional large-scale plants, with the first to be operational by 2037. These could generate about 11 gigawatts of power.
“No other country in the world can keep the lights on 24/7 with the renewables-only policy. We need to ensure hospitals can stay on 24/7, we need to ensure that cold rooms can stay on 24/7, we need to make sure that our economy could function 24/7—and we can only do that with a strong baseload power,” he said at the time.
Meanwhile, Bowen argues that while presented as a solution, nuclear energy won’t address Australia’s energy needs in the short term.
According to him, nuclear power would not generate electricity until after three parliamentary terms, and even then, it would only meet around 4 percent of Australia’s energy needs by 2050.
In contrast, Bowen says the government’s current plan involves bringing online 25GW of small-scale renewables and 60GW of large-scale renewables by 2035, measures the energy minister says will ensure the grid meets growing electricity demand.
