27 June 2024
Topics: Zero emissions nuclear energy
John Stanley
And even within your own, when you were in government, you were in there quietly saying can we just talk about this stuff? You’ve been doing this for a long time?
Ted O’Brien
John, I have, and there’s a lot of people across Australia who have been doing likewise and I think what has driven at least me has been seeing what works best overseas and just shaking my head saying there are other countries who have their households paying far lower power prices than our Australian households. Not only are their lights keeping on, but they’ve got an abundance of energy to drive industry, manufacturing, and they seem to be decarbonizing. Why on earth are we going solo especially under the current government on a grid that wants to be 98% renewables by 2050 and predominantly that being wind and solar. There’s nothing wrong with wind and solar by the way, but they are completely weather dependent technologies and they’re not going to do the job. They’re not going to keep our country a prosperous, strong country in the Indo Pacific moving forward so we have to learn from best practice internationally. So, we need a balanced mix and that means we need zero emissions nuclear energy as part of it working together, complementing renewables, and also gas is absolutely critical.
John Stanley
You know the criticism and I think you’re talking to this today. The criticism has been that at the earliest, and correct me if I’m wrong, 2035. It could be a bit later than that, you got to get stuff through the Senate, you’re gonna get the ban changed, there’s a long way to go. But let’s just say it’s the 2030s, late 2030s, the earliest you get a nuclear power station on, so that gives you more than 10 years that we’re going to keep the lights on as our demand for power continues to increase. So, you are talking today about the role of renewables, aren’t you, and the fact that you’re not saying no to renewables and renewable developments in in the years ahead?
Ted O’Brien
Indeed John, we are going to need a balanced mix. This is going to be so difficult. We have to take an all of the above approach and say okay, what different roles and different technologies play and there is an important role for renewables and that will continue to be the situation under a coalition government. But we see a very different role for renewables on our electricity grid than Labor does because Labor is putting all its eggs in one basket and saying renewables can do the whole lot, we’re the opposite. We’re saying you don’t need the maximum amount of renewables, you need the optimum amount and they can’t do the job on their own, they need the help of gas and so, between now and when nuclear can come into the market, we need to do three things. One, do not close our baseload power stations prematurely. Two, put more gas into the market and make sure it can be spread across the country. People can get it when they need it, and three, we do need to continue with renewables. I’m especially excited about what we could be doing with storage behind the meter, community batteries, its storage especially for solar we need to look at.
John Stanley
Just to explain with community batteries, you have a situation where you might have a community where you have large numbers of solar panels on roofs, the excess that’s generated from that might go to a community battery. The community battery provides the backup, that’s the idea. So you’re almost generating all your power in one little area rather than having to bring it in on transmission lines. Is that what you’re talking about?
Ted O’Brien
Indeed, you’re spot on because it’s the more that you can use the energy where you generate the energy, the better, and then you have situations where, which is absolutely fair enough, you’ve got people who are renting who are saying “well hang on my next door neighbour has got solar, I can’t put solar in I don’t own this joint but gee I wouldn’t mind a bit of that” and that is where you say okay, how can we have some common infrastructure in storage that can, you know, bring some equity to that. So there’s that part and then you’ve got the shift of time. So you know, to state the obvious, that the sun’s always out the same sort of time of the day, right? But you’ve got to be needing to shift the energy that can generate from the Sun to the mornings and especially the afternoons so if you get the right storage in, you can start moving the solar generated energy to the times when you need it most. So you know, it’s big on technology and this sort of empowers small business, local communities, all the stuff that my side of politics believes in, in terms of empowering consumers and empowering community.
John Stanley
I think I’m right on this. Narellan shopping centre, I think it’s one of the biggest in Sydney, and I think it’s generating 60 to 70% of its power from solar panels and batteries. So this is a shopping centre, which is almost taking itsself off the grid, but they’ve got to have some firming underneath it. Is that the kind of thing, you might have large industrial parks that might be generating their own power they might be storing their own power and so if it’s done locally, you eliminate the need for the big transmission lines.
Ted O’Brien
Yeah, that’s right and I think you make a really good example there. There are a lot of warehouses, shopping centres and whatnot that have the capacity to take solar. Again, the storage component of it is key, and this is, yes it helps the locals whether it be residents or shops in those cases, but it also helps everyone else because the more solar coming on right now on people’s rooftops, it is causing a strain in the national electricity system itself, right? Because again, middle of the day all this solar suddenly comes on and so it is causing strain. So not only does it help those people at home and so forth, but it helps the grid as a whole and that means, ultimately, less money that needs to be spent on augmenting the network upgrades, because your poles and wires are the biggest part of your bill right? So if you get a bill at home, we often talk about wholesale electricity prices, actually the network charges are the biggest part of your bill and under Labor’s plan, you’ve got up to 28,000 kilometres of additional transmission lines. We want to avoid so many transmission lines because it’s going to hit your bill and that’s how you start getting prices down.
John Stanley
Okay look, I mentioned earlier you know this stuff inside out, and I was listening to you on the 7.30 Report the other night and you were just wheeling out different models of different reactors and what’s happening in different parts of the world. I did have resonance with John Hewson where he was arguing his fight back package and in fact no answer he gave in any interview was incorrect, it’s just that it was so complicated. People were thinking I don’t quite follow this. The national energy market is very confusing for people, even just hearing you talk about the national energy market and transmission lines and all of that, is it going to be a case of you’re gonna have to really fine down your message to get people to understand what you’re saying?
Ted O’Brien
John, I think there’s no doubt and I think there’s sort of two parts to this, to be candid with you. People want cheaper, cleaner, and consistent 24/7 electricity and so in terms of a simple message, well that’s it. They’re not getting it now and it’s only going to get worse under Labor.
John Stanley
The question I’m going to ask is at the very earliest you won’t have these power stations operating, the nuclear ones, till late 2030s, what do you do between now and then, that’s the question.
Ted O’Brien
Yeah and that’s where we basically say, unlike Labor we don’t plan premature closure of baseload power stations and we’re not going to suffocate gas because we need more of it. As for renewables, yeah they’re still important. So we’ve never said nuclear is part of the short term. We’re the ones who have come out saying you’re not going to have the first electrons on the grid until 2035 or 2037, depending on the reactor type, but yeah so there’s no doubt, I mean, at the end of the day, what really counts is we have to get prices down. We’re paying among the highest prices in the world right now in Australia. We have a plan to get them down, the other part is all the complexities. We have got to be able to answer those questions.
John Stanley
I understand and look I think, you know, sometimes we shy away from complex debates and shy away from new ones and that’s to our cost, but one of the arguments we put is and if you could try and boil it down, are you saying that in the interest of making power prices cheaper and maintaining our standard of living, we’re going to have to essentially jack up emissions or keep them higher than we’d like to in the short term, in the interest of getting to net zero with nuclear in the longer term?
Ted O’Brien
I think firstly, in order to get to net zero by 2050 on our electricity grid, it’s not sort of a linear pathway where every single year you’re reducing the same. Secondly …
John Stanley
You get what I’m saying? That you’re talking about increasing emissions in the short term.
Ted O’Brien
So in the short term what Labor is saying just won’t be achieved. So it depends when you compare it to, so Labor for example they say, oh, no, no, we’ll be able to get 82% renewables on the grid by 2030 but they’re running about 1/3rd of the pace they need to and I mean Eraring just got extended right, by up to four years, that’s because a failure that Labor can’t deliver. The Victorian Labor Government have two similar deals with coal plants, keep them going and so, you know, my view is, I suppose that it was sort of, you know, a product of my own background as a business bloke, you know, I don’t really care what people say, it’s more what they do, and what is happening right now? Sure Labor might say they’re cleaning things up, emissions have gone sideways since they have come to government, prices have soared and the lights are going out, so it’s not working.
John Stanley
Alright, I’m sure we’re going to talk more and I appreciate that. And you’re going to play a key part in all this so thank you so much for your time this morning.
Ted O’Brien
Thanks for the opportunity.