Antinuclear

Martin Ferguson, Australia’s Energy Minister, pushes nuclear, sabotages renewable energy

Ferguson stokes nuclear debate, ABC Radio P.M.  December 13, 2011  Matt Peacock, The Energy Minister Martin Ferguson has urged the states to privatise their power assets. He’s also reignited the debate on nuclear power. The Greens say Mr Ferguson’s undermining the Government’s attempts to introduce renewable energy and most state governments have brushed aside Mr Ferguson’s push for privatisation.

That’s enraged the Greens who say that nuclear power is a dead end and that the white paper deliberately ignored the potential of the renewables. Stephen Dziedzic reports from Parliament House……

STEPHEN DZIEDZIC: The Federal Opposition’s energy spokesman Ian Macfarlane is also an advocate for nuclear power. He says the Coalition won’t consider nuclear while the community remains hostile to it, but that may change in the future…

IAN MACFARLANE: We haven’t had any active consideration of nuclear energy in Australia but the fact remains that nuclear energy is the one base load technology that is clean energy…

STEPHEN DZIEDZIC: The Greens are furious with Mr Ferguson. They say he’s biased against renewable energy and the figures the draft white paper cites on the cost of solar are out by a factor of at least two or three.

And the Greens Senator Christine Milne says Mr Ferguson is deliberately undermining the Government’s clean energy policies.

CHRISTINE MILNE: This long awaited energy paper it’s really a blast from the past. I mean Einstein once said that you can’t solve problems with the same thinking that created them.

And here you’ve got Martin Ferguson with the thinking that created the problems we’ve got with climate change coming out with predicting that the future is going to be based on coal and gas at the same time as the Prime Minister has announced that the reason she is giving Greg Combet industry and innovation is that she wants it linked to climate energy efficiency and the low carbon future. So these two policy areas are in complete collision course…. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-13/ferguson-stokes-nuclear-debate/3729494?section=business

December 14, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics