TODAY. G7 – and the juggernaut to the destruction of Ukraine rolls on – to the delight of weapons companies.
Cartoon from Sunday Telegraph
Well, well, ain’t it grand? The G7 will lend Ukraine $50 billion to help it buy weapons . Not that Ukraine will be expected to pay it back – it’s supposed to be repaid with profits earned from Russian assets in Europe. European companies want a share, especially European arms manufacturers. Some of the money will go to establishing weapons manufacture in Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a 10-year bilateral security agreement on 13 June aimed at strengthening Kyiv’s defence capabilities – a step towards “Ukraine’s eventual membership in the NATO alliance”
Is everyone swallowing this nonsense?
Putin is suggesting an immediate ceasefire, with Ukraine withdrawing its troops from the predominantly Russian-speaking four former oblasts of Ukraine that Russia currently occupies, and which Russia has integrated into the Russian Federation, and publicly abandons its quest to join NATO. Russia would retain Crimea. Numerous surveys have confirmed that the people of Crimea are content with their 2014 choice to join Russia. Ukraine, Russia, and the European powers previously agreed to a similar plan in 2014
Zelensky originally came to power on a campaign of peace, ensuring the autonomy of those four regions. His term of office has expired. He’s now operating on behalf of the USA, and running a regime that suppresses political parties, free speech and religious affiliation. It’s almost comical how Zelensky struts the world stage demanding more weapons, as Ukraine’s military suffers huge death toll, and draft-dodging abounds. Ukraine’s economy, agriculture, wrecked, – millions have emigrated, and many are hungry. And it’s becoming clear that Russia is winning.
The Peace Conference in Switzerland a farce – designed to bolster Zelensky as the great world “freedom leader?
The hypocrisy of the “Peace Conference” now going on in Switzerland – not attended by leaders of USA, China, Brazil. India – and of course, Russia not invited. The peace terms are limited to nuclear safety, food security (i.e. Ukraine’s ability to export its food by sea) and the return of Ukrainian children transferred to Russia. But Volodymr Zelensky insists on matters not included on the agenda – a complete Russian withdrawal to 1991 borders, payment of reparations, and punishment for what he says are Russian war crimes.
Not on Ukraine’s, NATO nations’, USA’s, radar is any question of considering Putin’s terms, or even talking to Putin.
It looks as if U.S. President Joe Biden is leading NATO by the nose, -with U.S weapons companies rejoicing, with the saintly Zelensky as glowing lead Field Marshal – pressing on to the complete destruction of Ukraine.
Why the AFR economics editor is wrong on GenCost, nuclear and “always on” power
RenewEconomy, David Leitch, Jun 14, 2024
It’s great to see that John Kehoe, economics editor at the AFR now wants to write about the CSIRO Gencost report.
Kehoe implies or states that the CSIRO report is biased and makes incorrect assumptions. Specifically, he quotes others as saying that coal generation is cheaper than renewable generation and that the CSIRO report underplays the advantages of always on dispatchable power.
In my opinion the article gets quite a few things wrong, probably most importantly the assumption that always on-power is somehow “better” than power that is not always on, and that this should be allowed for in the Gencost report. In my opinion this reflects the usual naive biases of someone that hasn’t put much work into the topic.
In this note I seek to show that LCOE capacity factor assumptions can be done on a number of bases and that there is no single right or wrong answer.
As with all modelling the suitability of the assumptions comes down to the question that is being answered. Gencost style LCOE modelling does not suit my own taste because it tries to go beyond the individual asset into the system cost, a task far better left to the Integrated System Plan (ISP).
However, even in the stricter view of LCOE that I espouse there is an inescapable need to choose between technical and economic capacity factor assumptions for dispatchable plant. At the least within the context of what I see as a “potshot” article Kehoe could have acknowledged the issue.
……………………………………Historically Kehoe’s research has been balanced and reasonable, even enjoyable. This article, it seems to me, is not balanced.
Kehoe writes:
“GenCost bizarrely assumes coal is more expensive than renewables”
That statement is both biased and flat out incorrect. An outcome of the Gencost process is to find that a new coal plant built under the Gencost assumptions has a higher LCOE than a wind or solar plant. That, of course, is even ignoring the carbon cost. There is no “bizarre assumption” it’s an outcome of the model assumptions. By all means have a go at the modelling assumptions, but please avoid assuming the conclusion.
Kehoe then quotes Aidan Morrison (from the Centre of Independent Studies) with seeming approval:
“Renewables are definitely not cheaper than coal”.
In fact, numerous studies find renewables to be cheaper than coal. Kehoe does absolutely nothing in the article to check the validity or otherwise of that statement.
I might add I do my own modelling, but I’m not shy of checking my numbers against those that others use.
Globally, in my opinion, there are at least two publishers of LCOE that are a source of authority. The first is Lazard who published Version 17.0 of the their annual Gencost study just recently. The numbers are for the US in $US
Every estimate of LCOE has several assumptions. Here, I draw attention to Lazard’s use of: 60% debt at 8% and 40% equity at 12% and the assumption that a nuclear plant operates at 97% capacity utilisation for 80 years.
The other major source is BNEF. BNEF almost certainly have the industry’s largest global team of full time energy related analysts. However, most of their work is highly paywalled reflecting the value added.
To summarise, no global analyst would be in the least bit surprised to find a report stating that in Australia the LCOE of wind and solar is less than coal. To be honest I’d have been very surprised at anything else. It’s been that way for years and even if wind costs are much higher then it’s likely that new coal generation costs have risen as much.
What is LCOE and should we care?
I’ve been calculating LCOEs for 30 years and more, and I am here to tell you there is no definitive “right” answer. No two people doing the sums will use the same assumptions. Also, unsurprisingly, the assumptions going into an LCOE calculation can generally be changed to to give a different answer.
I doubt that people in the industry really spend a lot of time on published LCOEs. Personally, I have never paid any more attention to Gencost numbers than to Lazard numbers.
Every financial analyst there has ever been is basically fine calculating their own NPV estimates of a generation asset and it takes only the slightest amount of rearranging to turn that NPV calculation into an LCOE.
As such, why use someone else’s numbers when you can use your own. Where the skill comes is understanding the assumptions and why you would choose one and not another and how sensitive the result is to an assumption choice.
It’s also important to appreciate that costs change in the real world as well as in the spreadsheet. A few years ago onshore wind LCOEs could be calculated in the A$40/MWh area. Today the numbers are double that.
LCOE = Levelised Cost of Energy essentially represents the price required for an electricity plant to exactly earn its cost of capital over its life. The origin of the term is unclear but it appears to have been first used in the 1980s. I understand it to be the same as Long Run Marginal Cost (LRMC) in the microeconomics lexicon.
To calculate the LCOE an analyst is required to forecast all costs of an asset over its life and then find a price for the annual output that will recover the present value of those costs.
To calculate the present value we make use of the time value of money. That is for example $1 to be received in one year’s time is worth less than $1 received today.
In short to calculate the LRMC:
- A discount rate must be chosen. In strict theory, and in practice not all technologies “should” have the same discount rate because some technolgies have riskier cash flows than others. For instance a gas generator may be subject to the market price of gas. In general higher discount rates will more heavily penalise technologies with longer term cash flows compared to those getting their cash back more quickly.
The useful life of the technology must be assumed. However, it is very widespread practice to calculate the net present value of a project for a finite life. Typically one of 20, 25 or 30 years is chosen. Due to the magic of discounting the value today of a life longer than 30 years is a small part of the total value. For instance at a discount rate of 10% years 30-60 add 6% to the value of a project and years 60-90 add nothing to the present value today.
So making a nuclear plant 80 years instead of 30 changes the answer by 6-13%. Not trivial but not all that big. Equally if you are going to do that for one technology you have to do it for every technology. Pumped hydro developers are always complaining that analysts don’t give them enough credit for long life.
- Of course, these discount calculations take no account of the technology and uncertainty that the future bring, just the time value calculation.
The capacity factor needs to be estimated. Capacity factor is expected output/output if operated every hour of the year. Solar plants have a low capacity factor, they only operate in daylight hours. The industry even has a term for plants that are dispatchable but only expected to operate occasionally, and that’s “peakers”. In fact the entire concept of the “merit order” presupposes that capital intensive plant will need a higher capacity factor than capital light but higher operating cost plant.
- Kehoe is on safer ground than in most places in his article when he observes that cost and value are not the same. Consumers every where will be grateful for this epiphany.
Capital cost needs to be estimated. In the case where lots of a technology is being built capital costs are not that hard. For technologies like coal and nuclear capital cost estimates in Australia are pretty much a guess. Another associated assumption is generally that the piece of kit can be built “overnight”. That is a nuclear plant can be built in the same time as a solar plant or coal plant or offshore wind plant.
I am reasonably confident that if the construction time was factored into a nuclear plant then from an NPV estimate it would likely take care of the continuing life assumption. If we factored in carbon costs between now and 2030 this overnight cost assumption would look like a bigger miss than the continuing value.
- Fuel costs need to be estimated. It should be obvious that thermal fuel costs, including perhaps future carbon costs are uncertain in some cases. For some coal generation you can assume an owned or “captive” coal mine in other cases less so. In the end someone has to take the risk around the cost of the fuel, either the generator or further upstream.
System cost v technology cost, the true weakness of Gencost
- In the past exercises such as Gencost or LAZARD 17, LCOE estimates served a limited purpose of calculating the price required to justify the investment in one piece of kit.
It was never the case that a piece of kit can operate in isolation from a system. A coal plant or a nuclear plant needs transmission as much as a wind or a solar plant. And it’s a matter of historical record that the pumped hydro industry in the US was developed to back up nuclear plants.
- However, in the past no-one cared that the LCOE of a coal plant was only part of the total system cost. And in my opinion the preferred view should be that LCOE estimates, Gencost included, should in general confine them selves to the price required for the individual asset.
It’s the job of system builders, the job of the ISP designers, to put the bits of kit together and create a system and estimate the system LCOE. That is the cost required to build and operate a system, such as the NEM.
- The ISP uses a complex modelling methodology, orders of magnitude above what can be provided in any LCOE individual asset analysis.
- The ISP has its own strengths and weaknesses like any other model, but the point here is that within its assumptions it builds the lowest cost system capable of keeping the lights on and meeting policy objectives. Certainly, the ISP takes account of capacity factors.
Dispatchable power capacity factors require a viewpoint
- Capacity factors were briefly discussed above. Even for wind and solar plant capacity factor is not as simple in the real world as is sometimes assumed in the spreadsheet. For instance should “spillage” be allowed for, should capacity factor be before or after an MLF assumption? For single axis solar there is an assumption about the DC:AC ratio.
Where the question becomes a double or nothing kind of thing is for dispatchable power. Specifically gas, coal and nuclear. The question is whether to use technical or economic capacity factor. It’s not a question that I’ve worried much about in the past, but it’s a legitimate question.
- It’s most obvious to think about this in the context of open cycle gas. I imagine that an open cycle gas plant is technically capable of operating at about a 70% capacity factor. Maybe more.
That is even allowing for blade maintenance if there was enough gas, noone cared about carbon emissions and the price was right you could run it about 70% of all the hours in the year.
I don’t really know what the technical capacity factor is because generally open cycle gas plants are not run like that. They are run to provide peak capacity and because of the prices they receive can sometimes earn their cost of capital on capacity factors less than 10%.
- From the point of LCOE if you assumed a capacity factor of 70% the gas plant would require a much lower price than if you assume a capacity factor of 10%.
The plant is technically capable of 70% but in use won’t run more than 10% of the time. What capacity factor should the modeller use? I am going to suggest that a modeller that uses 70% won’t be taken all that seriously.
Nuclear capacity factor in Australia
- In summary: Nuclear is very expensive even when modelled at full capacity factor. Using the latest recently published Lazard estimate for the USA which itself employees a capacity factor of 97% its around US$190/MWh or A$280/MWh.
However, even though nuclear is technically capable of being ramped up and down it ruins the economics.
- Consider the changing look of coal generation in the NEM.
Coal generation NEM wide
This is a year long average by time of day and why I used 2023 rather than 2024.
In another 5 years there will be at least another 10 GW of solar, and actually counting behind the meter and utility very likely there will be another 15 GW of solar. All that will reduce demand for any other source of generation to zero in the middle of the day.
It’s hard to see why any rational policy maker would want to run a nuclear plant in the middle of the day, let alone 5-10 of them. It’s an utter waste of resources.
Generation technology choices do not live in isolation from the system in which they operate. For those not already tired of the debate around small, modular reactors (SMR) the fact is that they are not a technology designed to deal with the reality of a system that has lots of renewables and specifically lots of solar.
It is a fact that a nuclear plant built in Australia that sold its electricity into the spot market would, for the foreseeable future, get pretty much zero for that electricity during daylight hours. Rationally it would be turned off, or alternatively like wind and solar plants operating at the same time the energy can be spilled.
Although apparently not appreciated by John Kehoe, this was explained by Steve Hamilton and Luke Heeney in the SMH back on 18 March. It would be tedious for readers for me to repeat the discussion but the whole reason that coal plants are going away is because they lose money in the middle of the day, more than they can recover in the evening. Consultants have been writing reports about this for years.
As Hamilton and Feeney write:
“The trouble is that nuclear is a terrible companion to renewables. The defining characteristic of being “compatible” with renewables is the ability to scale up and down as needed to “firm” renewables. Countries like France can only make nuclear work by exporting large amounts of energy when it’s surplus to demand. ”
This then is the problem that the CSIRO faces when thinking about a new coal or nuclear plant, what is the appropriate capacity factor to use?
In short there is nothing wrong with using 97% as the capacity factor for a nuclear plant, but if you are looking at it from an economic viability point of view neither is there anything wrong with using say 50%. And if you use 50% you end up with far higher cost.
More to the point, nuclear has two advantages for Australia. First it is carbon free, second to some extent it can make use of existing transmission.
Against that it has massive disadvantages. It’s incredibly expensive, the potential construction delay risk is totally unacceptable and the technology is fundamentally unsuited to Australia’s generation mix.
[EXCELLENT GRAPHS HERE on original]………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
To summarise, no global analyst would be in the least bit surprised to find a report stating that in Australia the LCOE of wind and solar is less than coal. To be honest I’d have been very suprised at anything else. It’s been that way for years and even if wind costs are much higher then it’s likely that new coal generation costs have risen as much https://reneweconomy.com.au/why-the-afr-economics-editor-is-wrong-on-gencost-nuclear-and-always-on-power/
Farmers who graze sheep under solar panels say it improves productivity. So why don’t we do it more?
Guardian, by Aston Brown, 14 June 24
Allowing livestock to graze under renewable developments gives farmers a separate income stream, but solar developers have been slow to catch on.As a flock of about 2,000 sheep graze between rows of solar panels, grazier Tony Inder wonders what all the fuss is about. “I’m not going to suggest it’s everyone’s cup of tea,” he says. “But as far as sheep grazing goes, solar is really good.”
Inder is talking about concerns over the encroachment of prime agricultural land by ever-expanding solar and windfarms, a well-trodden talking point for the loudest opponents to Australia’s energy transition.
But on Inder’s New South Wales property, a solar farm has increased wool production. It is a symbiotic relationship that the director of the National Renewables in Agriculture Conference, Karin Stark, wants to see replicated across as many solar farms as possible as Australia’s energy grid transitions away from fossil fuels.
“It’s all about farm diversification,” Stark says. “At the moment a lot of us farmers are reliant on when it’s going to rain, having solar and wind provides this secondary income.”
In exchange, the panels provide shelter for the sheep, encourage healthier pasture growth under the shade of the panels and create “drip lines” from condensation rolling off the face of the panels.
“We had strips of green grass right through the drought,” Dubbo sheep grazier Tom Warren says. Warren has seen a 15% rise in wool production due to a solar farm installed on his property more than seven years ago.
Despite these success stories, a 2023 Agrivoltaic Resource Centre report authored by Stark found that solar grazing is under utilised in Australia because developers, despite saying they intend to host livestock, make few planning adjustments to ensure that happens……………………………………………………………………………….
According to an analysis by the Clean Energy Council, less than 0.027% of land used for agriculture production would be needed to power the east coast states with solar projects – far less than the one-third of all prime agricultural land that the rightwing thinktank the Institute of Public Affairs has claimed will be “taken over” by renewables. That argument, which has been heavily refuted by experts, has been taken up by the National party, whose leader, David Littleproud, said regional Australia had reached saturation point with renewable energy developments.
Queensland grazier and the chair of the Future Farmers Network, Caitlin McConnel, has sold electricity to the grid from a dozen custom-built solar arrays on her farm’s cattle pastures for more than a decade.
“Trial and error” and years of modifications have made them structurally sound around cattle and financially viable in the long-term, she says.
“As far as I know, we are the only farm to do solar with cattle,” McConnel says. “It’s good land, so why would we just lock it up just for solar panels?” https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/13/farmers-who-graze-sheep-under-solar-panels-say-it-improves-productivity-so-why-dont-we-do-it-more
Why bet on a loser? Australia’s dangerous gamble on the USA
June 15, 2024, by: The AIM Network, By Michael Williss, https://theaimn.com/why-bet-on-a-loser-australias-dangerous-gamble-on-the-us/
A fresh warning that the US will lose a war with China has just been made by a US data analytics and military software company with US Department of Defense contracts.
It seems no-one is prepared to back the US to win a war with China, so why is Australia going all-out to align itself with provocative moves and hostility from the US directed at China?
Govini released its latest study of US capacity to fight China in June. Its annual reports measure the performance of the US federal government, looking at 12 top critical national security technologies through the lens of acquisition, procurement, supply chain, foreign influence and adversarial capital and science and technology.
It concluded that it is nearly impossible for the US to win a war against the PLA if a conflict were to break out between the two global superpowers.
The report also found that China has more patents than the US in 13 of 15 critical technology areas, further demonstrating how the US is falling behind in AI development.
“This year’s report also highlighted another reason a US conflict with China could be unwinnable: the very real possibility of parts scarcity.”
It identified serious risks within seven major DoD programs, including the cornerstone of AUKUS, namely the Virginia-class submarines. Not that this will worry the cargo-culters in Canberra who keep throwing billions at the fraught arrangement.
Another factor was China’s lead in the global supply chains.
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Govini CEO Tara Murphy Dougherty said:
”China still has a dangerously high presence in US government supply chains. The Departments of the Navy and Army showed a decreasing reliance on Chinese suppliers over the past year, however, the Department of the Air Force showed a 68.8 percent increase in the usage of Chinese suppliers.”
Govini’s report adds to a number of similar scenarios in recent years, starting with the headlined warning by The Times on May 16, 2020 “US ‘would lose any war’ fought in the Pacific with China.”
In the New Atlanticist, Lieutenant Colonel Brian Kerg, an active-duty US Marine Corps operational planner, critiqued biases in modern US war games, in which military planners command opposing armed forces in simulated warfare. He writes that instead of a short, sharp war over Taiwan with a win for the US, as predicted by war games, the greater likelihood is one of a years-long war with China with uncertain outcomes. One of those, too terrible to contemplate, must be the likelihood of Chinese retaliation against Australia for joining the US, for being fully interoperable with its military, and the consequent rubbleisation of Australian cities and attacks on US military bases here.
Retired US Army Colonel Dr John Mauk agrees that any conflict over Taiwan will almost certainly be a prolonged war, and he says that it would be one that favours China. He writes:
“U.S. military forces are too small, their supply lines are too vulnerable, and America’s defense industrial capacity is far too eroded to keep up with the materiel demands of a high-intensity conflict. Another critical factor undermining U.S. capacity to sustain a war is that Americans lack the resilience to fight a sustained, brutal conflict.”
By contrast, China is well-postured to sustain a protracted high intensity war of attrition.
He says that the current political divide in the US impedes its ability to respond to national security crises, and that:
“Americans in general are unprepared for, unwilling, or incapable to perform military service. Short of reinstituting a draft, U.S. military services cannot attract or retain enough manpower quickly enough to sustain a fight with China.”
Former US assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, A. Wess Mitchell, believes that “United States is a heartbeat away from a world war that it could lose.” He writes that:
“… today’s U.S. military is not designed to fight wars against two major rivals simultaneously. In the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan, the United States would be hard-pressed to rebuff the attack while keeping up the flow of support to Ukraine and Israel.”
Comparing US and Chinese naval growths, Mitchell says that the US is no longer able to “outproduce its opponents”. With US debt already in excess of 100% of GDP, he says that the debt loads incurred through war with China would risk catastrophic consequences for the U.S. economy and financial system.
He raises the possibility of a Chinese fire-sale of US debt:
“China is a major holder of U.S. debt, and a sustained sell-off by Beijing could drive up yields in U.S. bonds and place further strains on the economy.”
Hillary Clinton raised this quandary facing the US with then PM Kevin Rudd in 2010 when she asked him “How do you deal toughly with your banker?” It is a question that the US has yet to find an answer to.
And questions there are. Harlan Ullman, a senior adviser at the Atlantic Council, opens a January 2024 article with the observation that:
“Since World War II ended, America has lost every war it started. Yes, America has lost every war it started – Vietnam, Afghanistan and the second Iraq War.”
He sounds a warning:
“… given likely weapons expenditure rates should a war with China erupt, the U.S. has the capacity for about a month before, as in Ukraine, it runs out of inventory,” before asking his questions: “War with China would be a strategic catastrophe. The U.S. has not explained how such a war could be fought and won. The economic consequences would be disastrous. And how would such a war end? Can anyone answer these questions?”
China is quite adept at utilising sentiments such as these. Major Franz J. Gayl, a retired Marine Corps infantry officer has regularly written for Chinese online news outlet Global Times. Last year, a number of his contributed articles to GT were published as a book, “The United States Will Lose the Coming War with China” which is available on Amazon.
Australia’s Liberal-Labor pro-US coalition has placed a $368 billion bet on the ability of the US to prevent the expansion of Chinese influence in the South Pacific or its recovery of the island province of Taiwan.
It is an expensive way to be taught the African proverb that when the elephants dance, it is the grass that suffers.
Lithgow mayor SLAMS Peter Dutton’s plan for nuclear power plant in her town
By PADRAIG COLLINS FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA 14 June 24
A mayor whose town is rumoured to be earmarked for a nuclear power plant if Peter Dutton wins the next Federal Election, slammed that plan on Friday – despite some locals being in favour of it.
On Wednesday, Shadow Energy Minister Ted O’Brien did not deny that the central western NSW town of Lithgow was one of the sites where the Coalition plans to place a nuclear plant.
But fired up Lithgow mayor Maree Statham has shut down speculation that her town could go nuclear if Mr Dutton becomes prime minister in an election to be held within a year.
‘More than four decades ago, this council declared the city to be a nuclear free zone. This policy position remains in place,’ Ms Statham, an independent, said.
‘It is my intention to invite Peter Dutton to visit Lithgow and explain to this community why they should welcome a nuclear power plant in their backyard when no other community across Australia would do this.’
Ms Statham also pointed out that her district is also responsible for supplying water to Australia’s biggest city
‘I will suggest that he also then speak to the more than five million people in Sydney who drink water that is sourced from the catchment where he would like to place nuclear power plants,’ she said.
Another Lithgow councillor, Stephen Lesslie, told Daily Mail Australia that he opposes having a nuclear plant in the town because it would be ‘Expensive, unsafe (and there are) no waste solutions.’
But he said he does not expect much support from people in other parts of Australia for keeping Lithgow nuclear free.
‘If this means that the power plant won’t go where they live then the rest of Australia probably won’t give a damn,’ Mr Lesslie said.
Voters will pass judgment at a coming election in the next year on Mr Dutton’s vision for a nuclear Australia and Anthony Albanese’s government pursuing a renewable-led energy transition.
Until this week, the Coalition had been very coy about where it would put nuclear plants, but Mr O’Brien let the cat out of the bag by not denying a suggestion from radio host Ben Fordham that Lithgow was a prime target………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13529083/Lithgow-mayor-slams-Peter-Dutton-nuclear-plant.html
Nationals seats to go nuclear
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/pm/nationals-seats-to-go-nuclear/103970680, 13 June 24
As debate over energy policy intensifies again, the Nationals leader David Littleproud has confirmed that nuclear reactors would be built in Nationals electorates under the Coalition’s plan.
The Coalition is yet to reveal exactly where it would construct nuclear reactors, only saying it would be limited to areas with existing coal fire power stations.
The nuclear option has already sparked some debate the coal heartlands of New South Wales and Victoria.
TODAY. UK and other mainstream media -oblivious of the suicidal danger of attacking Russia
Once again, I am grateful to the extraordinary Dominic Cummings, for expressing this so eloquently:
“If you want to see the rot of the old system consider this.
A week ago (5/6/24), Putin called in the international media. He told them: NATO has given Ukraine long range missiles to strike deep in Russia, why don’t we have the right to give weapons to other regimes to do the same to NATO, we are considering such options…
And what media coverage do you see?
The old UK media almost entirely censored the event. Although widely discussed globally, it is a non-event in the UK. I’d bet >95% of MPs don’t know it happened.
Not only is our Idiocracy escalating a disastrous war they’ve blundered into they’re censoring statements from the world’s biggest nuclear power directly threatening us with reprisals for our actions, shoving celebrity gossip onto the BBC website rather than translating Putin’s words (then they claim ‘trust the BBC not disinformation’!). And funding Ukraine which is drone-striking Russian early-warning radars for nuclear weapons, of no relevance to the UKR war.
The gap between the self-perception of our elite media and the reality has not been starker since I started watching them.”
Strange – in 1963 U.S. President John F Kennedy gave a similar warning his American University speech:
“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.”
ABC boss Kim Williams launches stunning attack on Peter Dutton’s nuclear power plan – just days after Laura Tingle said Australia is ‘a racist country’
Daily Mail, By PADRAIG COLLINS FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA, 13 June 24
ABC’s chairman Kim Williams has launched a blistering attack on Peter Dutton’s nuclear power plan, just days after 7.30 correspondent Laura Tingle was ‘counselled’ for her comments about the Coalition.
Speaking on a panel at Sydney‘s Vivid Festival on Wednesday night, Mr Williams said Mr Dutton’s nuclear policy was ‘absent any of the normal fabric of policy formulation’.
In comments reported by news website Crikey, the national broadcaster’s boss said the Coalition had announced the policy ‘as a sound bite, with no detail as to emissions targets’.
Mr Williams, who is not a journalist and therefore not subject to the ABC’s editorial guidelines, said he was ‘not being political’ and not ‘in any way … speaking for the ABC’.
‘I’m speaking as an Australian citizen, and I’m entitled, like any Australian citizen, to have a view as to the necessity of good public policy in our nation.’
…………………………………………………………………….Just hours before Mr Williams comments, Nationals leader David Littleproud said if the Coalition wins the next election and goes ahead with its nuclear plans, power plants will be in National Party seats.
Mr Littleproud said Australians would ‘know very soon the specific sites’ being proposed.
‘We’ve been very clear that they will be limited to where existing coal power stations are, so we don’t need the extra 28,000 of transmission lines to plug the renewables.
‘We’re clear, there are 12 to 14 existing coal-fired power stations across the country so we can limit to that,’ he told ABC breakfast.
But Mr Williams said the Coalition was not doing near enough to explain what its nuclear plans are.
He said in the past, governments published green papers, which were designed to generate discussion from all interested parties on major issues.
‘And then they published a white paper, which is an announcement of intended government direction from which debate would follow in the Parliament, and then legislation would appear,’ he said.
‘That was the traditional process for public policy formulation, particularly on critical matters such as energy policy. I think it’s a pretty good system.’
Mr Williams has stood by his comments, telling Crikey that he ‘was trying to be as careful as I can be but still answer the question’.
‘It wasn’t said in a sort of vigorous “I’m taking on the opposition here”, it was said as a commentary about public policy and public policy formulation and public policy process.’
An ABC spokesman told Daily Mail Australia: ‘The ABC Chair Kim Williams is not an ABC employee and is not directly involved in creating and publishing journalism.
‘Mr Williams declared he was making his observations as a private citizen.’
Mr Dutton has also been contacted for comment. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13524723/ABC-boss-kim-williams-peter-dutton-nuclear-power-plan-laura-tingle.html—
Who prepared Dutton’s report on nuclear power?
By Noel Turnbull Jun 13, 2024, https://johnmenadue.com/who-prepared-duttons-report-on-nuclear-power/
The Canberra Press Gallery is not a homogenous group although its members do seem to suffer from a fair amount of groupthink; preference for gotchas and speculation about what might happen next in politics; and heavy dependence on leaks and drops for copy.
One part of it – the Murdoch part – subsumes this into propaganda and sneering opinion pieces.
All this makes intelligent analysis of policy difficult – as illustrated by the recent coverage of the Dutton Opposition commitment to nuclear power – which is mainly superficial and focussed on the politics of it all. The Albanese Government has not been helpful by saying that they will campaign every day until the election on nuclear policy – a vow unlikely to be kept given the short attention span of the media and party staffers.
Yet just as the best staffers plan answers (usually zingers rather than substance) to media questions about policies and recent political developments it is useful to consider the sort of questions the media might ask – if someone is smart enough to brief them first – after Dutton announces his plans.
The first ones are pretty obvious. Why is the report you commissioned more credible than the CSIRO report’s conclusion that nuclear is more expensive than renewables? Who prepared your report and what are their credentials on nuclear power? Do they have any conflicts of interests?
Then they can get more detailed.
What are the current time frames around the world for building nuclear reactors? Are you aware that the average is about 14 years? How can you be certain, given Australia’s record of infrastructure cost overruns, that they will be built by the announced date and on budget when even at the earliest it would be the late 20240s before one is operational?
Who will you get to build it and what is their track record? Have you analysed the construction record of nuclear power stations around the world and the cost overruns they have experienced?
Where will Australia get the staff and nuclear fuel required to build and commission the plants?
Are you aware that there is currently a worldwide shortage of people who can operate and maintain the existing plants operating around the world? How will you recruit sufficient skilled and experienced staff to operate them given this global shortage?
You have continued to refer to small modular reactors – Can you refer us to one which is in operation or planned?
Are you aware that SMRs and proposed micro sized reactors are so inefficient that they would need HALEU (high-assay low enriched uranium) fuel to power the new stations?
As this would require that, unlike traditional nuclear power stations which require only 3% to 5% enrichment, these new stations would require enrichment of 19.75%, would this mean that a single reactor might contain enough HALUE to make a nuclear weapon?
You have said you will build them on the sites of former coal powered stations? What will be the cost of demolishing the stations and remediating any environmental problems on the sites? How many such sites exist and how many others will become available in time for nuclear construction to meet your timetables?
As you have dumped current emissions targets what will the climate impacts if there are delays in bringing the nuclear power stations online?
What is the impact on meeting carbon targets if support for renewables is diluted in the time lag required for nuclear power?
How do you plan to override States which have legalised nuclear bans?
What are your plans for disposal of nuclear waste?
Now staffers are more likely to be spending their time on factional manoeuvring; writing zingers; thinking about how they can get pre-selection or which lobbying firm might offer them a well-paid gig than other matters.
But Opposition staffers might find it useful to start coming up with convincing answers to questions such as this. And Government staffers should be thinking of how they can be used to demolish Dutton’s case.
Dutton’s nuclear plan wouldn’t even meet net zero by 2050 target, report finds
“The proposal by the federal Coalition would not significantly reduce emissions until the late 2040s, by which time catastrophic impacts would be almost certain.”
Giles Parkinson, Jun 11, 2024, https://reneweconomy.com.au/duttons-nuclear-plan-wouldnt-even-meet-net-zero-by-2050-target-report-finds/
The federal Coalition’s nuclear energy proposal would not just result in the tearing up of Australia’s commitment to the Paris climate treaty, it wouldn’t even be able to deliver net zero emissions on Australia’s main electricity grid by 2050, according to a new report.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s admission on the weekend that the Coalition’s energy plan – to stop the roll out of renewables, keep coal fired power stations online, and build more gas while waiting for nuclear – would render Australia’s interim emissions target for 2030 impossible to meet.
Dutton suggested that the Coalition would be willing to tear up that agreement, but would still seek to honour the later 2050 net zero target once nuclear power generators could be rolled out in the country in the 2040s.
A report prepared by Solutions for Climate Australia, led by Barry Traill, says Dutton’s proposal would result in some 2.3 billion tonnes of additional carbon emissions over the Australian Energy Market Operator’s step change scenario.
That is bad enough, because it would mean Australia walking away from its international commitments – the Paris treaty that Australia signed up to requires no backtracking because of the urgency of emissions reduction – and becoming a pariah once again on the international stage.
Worse than that, SCA says that even rolling out nuclear as early as 2040/41 – which it does not believe is feasible, but is using that date for the sake of modelling – and rolling it out as quickly as France (also questionable), would still leave Australia well short of reaching net zero by 2050.
The Coalition energy plan remains vague, but to fill the gap created by the lack of renewables and the shutting down of ageing coal fired power stations would require a 10-fold increase in gas generation, which with its newly understood methane leaks and ambitions is barely cleaner than coal.
“The calculations in this paper use a series of assumptions based on what the federal Coalition has said their nuclear reactors plan would achieve,” the report says.
“Many of these assumptions are not considered feasible by energy experts: it is near impossible that nuclear reactors could come online in 2040, nor that Australia could build nuclear reactors at one of the fastest rates in
history.
“The build rate used in this analysis generously matches the relatively fast rate achieved by France from 1978, which had a population of 53 million, and had already been building nuclear power reactors for 23 years.
“It is extremely unlikely that Australia could match this build rate, but this has been used as a proxy for the purposes of the analysis. Even with this scenario’s very ambitious build rate of nuclear reactors, the National Electricity Market would
not reach net zero by 2050.”
“Drastically reducing carbon emissions this decade is essential to avoiding more extreme fires, heatwaves, floods and droughts as the impacts of climate intensify.
“The proposal by the federal Coalition would not significantly reduce emissions until the late 2040s, by which time catastrophic impacts would be almost certain.
“The proposal would break Australia’s existing international commitments to both the current 2030 target and its obligations under the Paris Agreements.
“Any proposal to introduce nuclear reactors to Australia is therefore not a climate policy, but rather a policy to increase emissions, acting to distract from urgent climate action over the coming decades.”
TODAY. Atrocities upon atrocities – the Israelis have excelled themselves this time.
Who has the words to describe this? To express this horror?
Some of the victims have:
“Before our eyes, we saw bodies being torn apart and scattered on the roads, and we saw soldiers hidden in civilian clothes and in people’s cars running and killing everyone they met on their way without distinguishing between a child, a woman, a young person, or an old person. We saw the bodies of our brothers cut up, without heads, lying on the ground,” Abu Laban told Mondoweiss.
“I tried to stand up, but I couldn’t. I was covered in blood. I looked at my leg and it was cut off. I looked at my best friend next to me, and I found him taking his last breath.” – ” I cannot sleep. I cannot forget anything I witnessed and saw. I cannot forget the people who were running in panic and fear, searching for their relatives and families amidst the destruction and dismembered bodies.” -Al-Hawar
Do you think that I’m making this up – because I’m “anti-semitic”, because I “hate the Jews”?
I don’t hate the jews, but I hate what they are doing in Gaza – and I hate the way some other Jews are rejoicing in these atrocities. And I hate the way that some Gentiles are pretending that it’s all OK – because 80 years ago atrocities were done to Jews – so we can’t blame the poor things, really – can we?
Yes we can.
The International Criminal Court is investigating Israel’s alleged war crimes in Palestine.
Israel’s latest effort – the rescue of four hostages. This was planned well in advance, and was done in at 11 a.m. , as a complete surprise in a highly populated area. Israeli special forces had numerous men disguised as refugees, installed in the area. The attacking Israeli military wore civilian clothes, rode in Palestinian cars, and moved among the people in disguise. There were no warnings to evacuate, or orders from the army to move elsewhere, and people were surprised by the Israeli special forces and tanks. Helicopters, fighter planes, artillery, and tanks descended. Reconnaissance aircraft and foot solders then began committing massacres against the civilian population.
As reported by Robin Anderson – “When Israel Burned Refugees Alive, Establishment Media Called It a ‘Tragic Accident’. Anderson details the verbal gymnastics used by the corporate media, to obscure the truth about what happened, in this atrocity, and others. Words like words like “genocide,” “massacre” and “starvation.” are not used. Journalists from respected media like NBC were embedded with Israeli forces. The dead are as much as possible described as Hamas, not as Palestinian civilians. For the New York Times, Time magazine, Forbes and the AP, mass killings are “a mistake” or a “tragic accident”. A death toll of 274, and injuries to 696 – are reported as “figures from Hamas” – with the inference that you can’t really rely on them.
Well – it’s not working this time. People have had a gutful of corporate media toeing the USA line, as it toes the Israeli line.
Dutton confirms nuclear push and climate denial go hand in hand: The pretence has gone
Giles Parkinson, Jun 10, 2024, https://reneweconomy.com.au/dutton-confirms-nuclear-push-and-climate-denial-go-hand-in-hand-the-pretence-has-gone/—
So, let there now be no doubt or confusion: Opposition leader Peter Dutton has confirmed that his Coalition’s push for nuclear energy is inextricably linked with his party’s implacable denial of climate science. The pretence that it is anything else is now gone.
Dutton’s interview with The Weekend Australian published on Saturday makes two important concessions: That nuclear energy is very slow, and cannot feasibly be deployed in Australia before the mid 2040s. It also proves that he is ready and willing to rip up the Paris climate target – and sacrifice the country’s economic future – in the name of his energy dogma.
Australians should not be surprised, but they ought to be appalled, and terrified. The science is absolutely clear, the world is on track to blow the carbon budget that could hold average global warming below 1.5°C over the next five years. The world is already close to 1.5°C and the impact are being felt.
But Dutton wants to put off any serious action on emissions reduction for another two decades, using a re-heated scare campaign about the lights going out and a collapsing economy if the country pushes ahead with renewables.
He says there is “no hope” of reaching Australia’s 2030 interim target, still a relatively modest reduction of 43 per cent, mostly achieved through accounting tricks on land use. But he says the target of “net zero by 2050” will stand.
It always seemed inevitable that the 2050 target was going to be used by climate science deniers such as Dutton and legacy industries as an excuse to delay any action. It might as well have been invented by the fossil fuel industry, which uses it as a justification for business as usual.
The only significant corporate leader calling this out is iron ore billionaire Andrew Forrest, who aims for “real zero” by 2030 for his Pilbara operations, no mean feat but one the world should be following. At least his ambition is in line with the science, which demands urgent action and most emission cuts to be delivered this decade, not in 20 years time.
The federal Coalition, however, has hitched its flag with what the UN secretary general described last week as the “godfathers of chaos”, helping the fossil fuel industry spread disinformation and delay climate action, and throwing the rest of the world under a bus.
Dutton’s comments about tearing up the Paris agreement make the questions about cost, waste and social licence of nuclear almost redundant. The key issue here is the Coalition’s express intention to do little or nothing about emission cuts in the short term, or even the medium term, blocking the roll out of renewables, tearing up contracts, and sacrificing the future of Australian and its economy in the name of fossil fuel supremacy.
The push for nuclear power in Australia has long been directly linked with climate denial, because in a country like Australia with such magnificent wind and solar resources, it is not about an energy choice but about climate delay. What better technology to serve those purposes than nuclear.
Even when it was promoted by so called “eco modernists” and self-described “critical thinkers” – meaning they thought they were smarter than everyone else – the links were clear.
If you thought their intention was to solve the climate crisis it was betrayed by the relentless attacks on renewables. Stop what can be done now to wait for something that may or not work in the future. Dutton’s position is to expressly support the burning of more coal and gas in the interim.
It makes no environmental sense, and no economic sense. And it makes no engineering sense because the coal fired power stations are old and unreliable. They need to be replaced. Gas and nuclear are the two most expensive options, and the most ill-fitted to fit into a grid where rooftop solar is low cost, popular and increasingly dominant.
It is instructive that many of those individuals who claimed to have been such “critical thinkers” and so concerned about the climate crisis have now signed up with coal and gas lobby groups, where they can catch up with former federal energy ministers also given shelter by the fossil fuel industry. The environmental pretence is long gone.
These actors have been supported by a collection of so-called “think tanks”, which are now quite obviously little more than propaganda machines for the fossil fuel industry – cheered on and amplified by deeply funded misinformation campaigns on social media – including by the Atlas Group – and by the Murdoch press.
Dutton’s words are taking Australia’s climate and energy divisions back to the dark ages of the Tony Abbott era. But it is much darker than that. Abbott could hide under the argument that UN climate talks had failed, and could plug into lingering climate skepticism, and the old zingers about $100 roasts and turning cities into ghost towns.
But we now have an international climate agreement, imperfect as it is, and more ambitious emissions reduction targets, still inadequate as they are. Dutton would have Australia rip these up and do nothing for decades in the face of the overwhelming science, and the momentous shift to clean energy around the world.
It would turn Australia into the global pariah that it was seen during the Abbott years, and deprive it not only of making its own contribution to the efforts to limit global warming, but also of protecting the future of its own economy.
It comes as South Australia – with its 75 per cent share of wind and solar in the past year, its 100 per cent net renewable target for 2027, and the overwhelming interest from new industry seeking to plug into this cheap and green power – makes a nonsense of the federal Coalition’s claims about the lights going out.
To be sure, Labor’s own policies and targets need ramping up and that might be difficult given the party machine that still encourages the gas industry. It might only be possible in a minority Labor government where the influence of the Teals and the Greens can come to bear. What Dutton’s comments make clear is that Australia cannot afford a lurch back to the federal Coalition.
Does nuclear power have a future in Australia? These numbers will help cut through the debate
By energy reporter Daniel Mercer and climate lead Tim Leslie, 11 Jun 2024, [excellent charts and graphics]
As the shift away from fossil fuels gathers pace, the Coalition has turned to an emissions-free technology that has a long and contentious history — nuclear fission.
To help make sense of what role, if any, nuclear power could play we turned to Alan Finkel, Australia’s former chief scientist, and economist John Quiggin.
These are the numbers that you should keep in mind when thinking about its place in Australia’s energy transition.
Let’s look at nuclear power today
0 grams — The amount of carbon dioxide nuclear power plants emit generating electricity.
COMMENT. Unlike wind and solar, the continuing supply of fuel for nuclear power involves a long series of carbon emitting steps – starting with uranium mining
There are, according to Australia’s former chief scientist Alan Finkel, four kinds of large-scale power generation that directly emit no greenhouse gas emissions.
Three of them are obvious and fit firmly in the renewable category – hydro-electricity, wind and solar power.
The fourth is nuclear power, which produces no greenhouse gases during operation, but requires fuel in the form of radioactive elements to power it. …………………
Mix of electricity from low carbon sources
Solar and wind now generate more electricity globally than nuclear power.
………………………….. in an interview with the Australian Financial Review, the head of the IEA, Fatih Birol, said nuclear power was not a good option for Australia as it would take too long.
“I have been a proponent of nuclear for many years,” he said.
“But if there is a country that has a lot of resources from other sources, such as solar and wind, I wouldn’t see nuclear as a priority option. I’m talking about Australia now.”
…………………Australia would need to partner with another country to build a nuclear power plant, but turning to the current leaders in the space, Russia and China, wouldn’t be an option.
John Quiggin is a senior fellow in economics at the University of Queensland.
He said Australia — for obvious geopolitical reasons — would be unlikely to hitch its wagon to either country.
“I don’t think that requires a lot of imagination,” Professor Quiggin said. “If Chinese firms have any special sauce, that’s no use to us. I would say the Chinese model is essentially not relevant.”
…………………new nuclear energy is barely keeping pace with closures, and outside of China there is no evidence of a jump in the amount of nuclear energy coming online.
In another sign of where the world is going, 2023 was the year when global large-scale battery investment overtook nuclear investment for the first time.
How about how much it costs to build?
1.5 times — At least how much more expensive building nuclear power in Australia would be than renewables supported by batteries.
One of the reasons the Coalition is proposing nuclear is because of the cost of the clean energy transition, but when the CSIRO looked at the figures it found that nuclear was a significantly more expensive option.
Building renewable energy on its own is a fraction of the cost of new nuclear, and in some cases lower than the cost of actually running nuclear power stations.
However, a better comparison is between nuclear and solar or wind supported by storage and transmission.
The CSIRO looked at this in its latest GenCost report, which compares the cost of different ways of producing electricity, and found it was at least 50 per cent more expensive than large-scale wind and solar power backed by “firming” technologies such as batteries.
“We did a lot of work to determine what nuclear power would cost in Australia,” Paul Graham, the chief economist of the CSIRO’s energy business unit, said.
“We’ve previously reported on small modular reactors.
“But this time, we did an update and looked at the cost of large-scale nuclear reactors, and they’re cheaper — on the order of $150 to $250 a megawatt hour. That’s still one and a half to two times the cost of renewables.
……. digging into the modelling only makes the case worse for nuclear.
When looking at the cost of renewables, the CSIRO factored in the maximum possible figures for grid upgrades, higher than the expected cost.
It also warned that the nuclear cost could only be achieved by building nuclear power at scale, so multiple reactors one after the other. The first power plant would be subject to what’s called a “first of its kind” multiplier, which could double the price from $8.5 billion to $17 billion.
Nuclear isn’t alone in facing this cost, it’s applied to any technology a country hasn’t built before, and we only have to look at the NBN or Snowy 2.0 to see the likely outcome.
But even in the world of big projects, nuclear power stations have among the worst track records for running over time and over cost.
Mega project expert Bent Flyvbjerg has gathered a database of the costs and timeframes for major projects around the world.
It shows nuclear power plants are among the worst for cost and timeframe overruns — on average they come in at more than double the original quoted price.
Taking this conservative approach means the CSIRO’s figures are far more generous to nuclear than international comparisons.
Global investment bank Lazard has been publishing an analysis of what’s called the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) since 2008. LCOE is essentially how much money a power source would have to sell its electricity for to make any money.
In 2023, the lowest LCOE for nuclear power was $220 a megawatt hour, compared with onshore wind and batteries, which was $65MW/h, more than three times the cost. Even the top estimate of its range for solar and wind was still below nuclear’s cheapest range. ………………………………..
$88 billion — The latest projected cost of building the 3.2 gigawatt Hinkley C nuclear plant in the UK.
Unlike renewable energy produced at volume, getting an accurate price on nuclear power is tricky. But looking at projects underway indicates it can be a very expensive proposition.
A big part of the relative decline in nuclear power has been its high cost compared with many of the other technologies vying for political, investor, and social support.
Exhibit A in this tale is the Hinkley C plant on the Somerset coast of the UK.
In 2007, the then chief executive of French power provider EDF, which wanted to build the plant, boasted that by 2017 Britons would be able to cook their Christmas turkeys using electricity from Hinkley.
When EDF finally committed to the giant 3.2 gigawatt plant in 2015, the initial budget was £18 billion ($34 billion), with a scheduled completion date of 2025.
Earlier this year, following a spate of cost and time blowouts, EDF said the estimated costs of building the plant would soar to as much as £46 billion ($88 billion).
Completion of the first reactor was not expected until 2029 at the earliest.
The French utility, meanwhile, did not even bother to give a time-frame for the second reactor.
What we do know is how much the British public will be paying for power from Hinkley. In order to build the plant the UK government committed to paying $171/MWh for the first 35 years, adjusted to inflation. This means the prices rise in line with inflation, by the end of 2023 it was $245/MWh.
For context, Australia’s wholesale energy cost in the last quarter of 2023 was $48/MWh.
Dr Finkel described Hinkley’s costs as “stunningly expensive”. …………………………
Let’s talk about timeframes
………………………….20 years — How long Alan Finkel says going to nuclear will delay the shift from fossil fuels.
Dr Finkel is not opposed to nuclear power as an energy source, but said it cannot be thought of as a solution to decarbonising our power system for the next few decades.
He said a call to go direct from coal to nuclear is effectively a call to delay decarbonisation of our electricity system by 20 years. ……………………………..
96 per cent— How much of our grid is projected to run on renewables and storage by 2040.……………………………
10,000 years— How long the US EPA requires the isolation of nuclear waste.…………………..
What about smaller reactors?
0 — The number of commercial small modular reactors under construction or in operation outside of China and Russia. (COMMENT – and China and Russia have no more than one or two, and not operating well)
3.9 times — How much more a small modular reactor would cost compared to wind and solar supported by batteries.……………….. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-11/nuclear-power-for-australia-cost-and-timelines-explained/103641602?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR390g5b6693i-HFkuGA0gyw1xFQP_10ZYzZ_zsk9fk0qwyp-S7AHZ9wwm0_aem_AUDX1LozQsj9FqEcFeQYTrTgIC8dBhGF8t3bhnH-snEwrlJGR8UxeU5JoNwc0rGGaSx-fHZ9Q5WDutOjBT25sbNz
The network of conservative think-tanks out to kill the switch to renewables
Michael Mazengarb, Feb 28, 2024 https://reneweconomy.com.au/the-network-of-conservative-think-tanks-out-to-kill-the-switch-to-renewables/
Australia’s renewable energy and emissions reduction plans are being targeted by coordinated campaigns from conservative “think tanks”, as the Coalition embraces nuclear and its MPs rail against all forms of large scale renewables and transmission lines being built as part of the clean energy transition.
Having successfully defeated the Voice to Parliament referendum by feeding the distribution of disinformation, conservative groups like the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), the Liberal-party aligned Menzies Research Group and the ‘campaign group’ Advance Australia are all ramping up their pro-nuclear, anti-renewables campaigns.
Anyone familiar with Australian climate and clean energy policy over the last couple of decades will be familiar with the Institute of Public Affairs. The well-funded think tank – thanks to generous donors that include mining billionaire Gina Rinehart – has long railed against any efforts to tackle climate change, calling for the abolition of the carbon price and virtually any policy that supports renewable energy.
The IPA has published a flurry of reports that have sought to stoke fears renewables causing the loss agricultural land in Victoria, and high costs of renewables in Western Australia – two claims that rely on gross exaggeration.
Like the IPA, the Centre for Independent Studies has strong links with the Coalition parties – promoting the works of Coalition MPs, and several of the group’s ‘alumni’ going on to serve as Liberal Party MPs or candidates.
The group recently launched a new campaign to promote nuclear energy and to actively attack the efforts of energy market regulators and institutions, including the Australian Energy Market Operator and the CSIRO, to plan the transition to renewables.
The Menzies Research Centre has the clearest, explicit, ties to conservative politics – having been named for former prime minister Robert Menzies – and pumps out opinion pieces critical of renewables and advocating for fossil fuels that are often published by News Corp outlets.
For example, a recently authored piece by Menzies Research Centre’s senior fellow, Nick Cater, blamed renewables for the Victorian blackout (which was caused by storms and an outage at the Loy Yang A coal power station).
All of these campaigns are having an impact, being embraced and fuelled by the Federal Coalition, with opposition leader Peter Dutton set to reignite the ‘climate wars’ by pushing for an Australian nuclear power industry – despite the astronomical costs, and the huge wait times for the industry.
Coalition MPs dominated the speakers list of a recent anti-renewable energy rally, that descended on Canberra earlier this month.
The group that is likely to be running the pro-nuclear ground campaign ahead of the next election, Advance Australia, previously led substantial efforts to oppose the recent First Nations Voice to Parliament referendum. The group is already running campaigns that denigrate renewable energy technologies, campaign against net zero targets, question climate change and promote nuclear energy.
While attempting to portray itself as a ‘grassroots’ roots movement, a conservative counter to GetUp! that claims to be taking on ‘woke elites’ – Advance Australia has amassed significant funds from some of Australia’s wealthiest individuals.
Donors to Advance Australia include former Vales Point power station owner Trevor St Baker, Bakers Delight founder Roger Gillespie, owner of Kennards Self Storage Sam Kennard, the former Blackmores CEO Marcus Blackmore, former fund manager Simon Fenwick, and former Shark Tank investor Steve Baxter.
Recent political donation disclosures show Advance Australia receiving a massive, $1.025 million donation from Perth-based car salesman Brian Anderson, and $1.1 million over the last three years from Fenwick.
Sam Kennard – who is worth an estimated $2.6 billion and who also sits on the board of the Centre for Independent Studies – regularly attacks renewables and promotes climate change denial on social media, and donated $165,000 to Advance over the last three years.
The depth of the interconnections between these think tanks is difficult to assess, but there is growing evidence that points to a coordinated international campaign to undermine renewables and promote the interests of fossil fuels and the pro-nuclear lobby.
The efforts of researchers like University of Technology Sydney professor Jeremy Walker have drawn links between the campaigns of Australia’s conservative lobby groups and other members of a global ‘Atlas Network’ of conservative think tanks. The US-based Atlas Network disperses grant funding and runs training on campaigning and fundraising for its international network, including to Australian think tanks.
Australian members of the Altas Network include the IPA, the CIP, and the Australian Institute for Progress – which has also adopted anti-renewable energy and anti-electric vehicle positions.
A recently published submission by Walker draws the parallels between these ‘think tanks’ and the anti-wind farm campaigns that have targeted the Illawarra Renewable Energy Zone, and culminated in a bizarre anti-renewables rally outside Parliament House in Canberra – and similar campaigns that opposed wind farm developments in the United States.
Anti-off-shore wind farm campaigns in the states of New Jersey and Rhode Island have used similar, disproven, claims about impacts on whale populations. These campaigns, as reported by the New York Times, were being funded and coordinated on the other side of the United States, by fossil-fuel industry linked the Texas Public Policy Foundation – itself a member of the Atlas Network.
International members of the Atlas Network include high-profile propagators of climate denial and pro-fossil fuel propaganda, including the US-based Heartland Institute, and the London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation – which now features former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott on its board of trustees.
The complexity and opaqueness of the network is noteworthy, and has made the drawing of distinct relationships between groups and individuals difficult to track and analyse. But the shear number of linkages is clear, as are the relationships between the groups and Australia’s conservative political parties.
Several current and former members of the Australian-based think tanks have done stints with the Atlas Network and its members, with some members openly acknowledging the coordination between groups on training and funding.
This includes ex-IPA executive Alan Moran – who formally spearheaded the IPA’s climate denial efforts, former Abbott-government adviser and climate sceptic Maurice Newman – who have both held roles across several members of the Atlas Network
What is clear is that efforts to undermine the phase-out of fossil fuels remain strong, remain well funded and efforts are being coordinated globally.
The Voice to Parliament referendum was a stark example of how misinformation and disinformation can be deployed to influence the public and public policy, and Australia’s renewables sector will need to be ready to counteract these efforts when facing a similar campaign in the lead up to the next federal election.
1 This month
7 April – WEBINAR – Australia and the Doomsday Clock – Preventing nuclear war through NoFirstUse and other policies
Online | Tuesday April 7, 4:00-5:30pm, Australian Eastern Time / 8:00-9:30am Central Europe Time
– Access the registration link
15 April – Zoom –Nuclear Power is Not the Solution
Apr 15, 2026 01:00 AM in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney
Join the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) on Tuesday, April 14th for a timely webinar exploring the risks associated with nuclear power and challenging the myth that it offers a simple, safe, carbon-free solution to the climate crisis
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 