Antinuclear

Carbon time bomb: Dutton’s nuclear plan will blow up Paris and emissions targets, CCA says

ReNew Economy Rachel Williamson, Feb 24, 2025

Choosing a nuclear power future over renewables will blow up Australia’s carbon emissions budget and create a carbon time bomb of up to 2 billion tonnes in extra greenhouse gases by 2050, a new analysis from the federal government’s Climate Change Authority says.

The analysis, released on Monday, poses a grim picture of what the nuclear future, as painted by Opposition leader Peter Dutton and analysed in a controversial and contested Frontier Economics’ report in December, would look like from an emissions perspective.

Extra emissions from the electricity sector alone would spike by a cumulative 1 billion tonnes come 2050, and this number would double when adding emissions from a broader economy unable to use zero-carbon electricity.

Australia would miss its 82 per cent emissions-free electricity target by more than a decade, reaching that target by 2042, and those emissions would also be consistent with global warming of 2.6ºC, rather than the 1.8ºC currently forecast for a renewables-led transition.

It will also ruin short term targets, causing Australia to miss its legislated 43% national emissions reduction target for 2030 by more than five percentage points, and still not achieving this level of reduction by 2035.  

The Coalition plans to build nuclear plants at seven sites across Australia for an estimated $331 billion over 25 years. The locations are all old or current coal power plant sites of Mount Piper and Liddell in New South Wales, Loy Yang in Victoria, Tarong and Callide in Queensland, Port Augusta in South Australia, and Collie in Western Australia.

Retaining coal fired power stations to hold space for the first nuclear generators, which would come fully online in the late 2040s, means the worst years for emissions will be 2034-2040……………………………

“What comes next is the fork in the road we are in the middle of. The market knows we are on a renewables road, supported by storage and where needed, gas. The Opposition has proposed a nuclear diversion, which provides a dramatic shift in momentum and direction.” 

The former NSW Liberal treasurer says the choice as to which road Australia takes – nuclear or renewables – is now “imminent” but the consequences of that choice can be estimated. 

“We will find out soon what Australians think of this proposed change in direction for the country’s energy source. The RBA considers the pressures nudging prices up or down and it is the Climate Change Authority’s role to do the same for emissions,” Kean says.

Breaching commitments

The emissions bill from switching to nuclear means Australia will need to re-negotiate national and international commitments, including the legislated national target of reducing emissions by 43 per cent by 2030.

Australia can’t meet this target, due in just five years, if it chooses nuclear as economy-wide emissions would be about 34 million tonnes higher in 2030 than under the current trajectory. 

Instead, Australia would hit an emissions reduction below 2005 levels of just 37.1 per cent.

New Paris Agreement targets for 2035 are due this year, although Australia has already formally missed the deadline to issue these and Opposition leader Peter Dutton says while he wants to keep Australia in the global agreement, he won’t participate in the target-led pathway that it mandates. ……………………………………………………………………………………The current renewables-first energy transition has its own challenges and the nuclear debate is a distraction from focusing on ways to deal with these and other energy-related problems, The Australia Institute research director Rod Campbell said in a statement. 

……………….“Nuclear is a distraction that avoids scrutiny of Australia’s real climate problems.”  https://reneweconomy.com.au/carbon-time-bomb-duttons-nuclear-plan-will-blow-up-paris-and-emissions-targets-cca-says/

February 24, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change - global warming