Essay by Eric Worrall
Domestic energy policy blunders from politicians on all sides are killing Australia’s manufacturing industry.
‘The big lie’: Why governments can’t deliver cheaper power
Political leaders have been promising lower power bills for two decades. But with the energy transition in full swing, its high time they came clean about its true costs.
Ryan Cropp Energy and climate reporter
Mar 27, 2025 – 5.00am
Since the early 2010s, when Australia’s climate wars began in earnest, practically every federal political leader has at some point in the electoral cycle pledged to do something about power prices. Very rarely have they followed through.
The Albanese government is the latest to walk into the trap. On Tuesday night, Treasurer Jim Chalmers offered up a third round of electricity rebates, in part to cover its tracks after its ill-fated 2022 election promise to reduce bills by $275 was overtaken by events – albeit largely beyond their control.
Not to be deterred, though, the Coalition is heading into the federal election selling an equally ill-advised counterclaim that its policy to replace Australia’s coal power stations with seven government-owned nuclear power stations will lower power bills by 44 per cent.
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But whichever way you slice it, Australia’s energy system is at a crossroads. It is reliant upon an ageing and increasingly unreliable fleet of coal-fired power stations that will eventually need to be replaced. Whether governments choose to do that with renewables, nuclear or something else entirely, it’s going to cost a lot of money.
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Read more (paywalled): https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/the-big-lie-why-governments-can-t-deliver-cheaper-power-20250318-p5lki3
Australia’s energy infrastructure is not “at a crossroads”, it is on the verge of falling apart. Decrepit power systems have been maintained well beyond their expected end of life, because decades of hostile regulatory policies have deterred investment in new generators.
The impact of incompetent, ill considered government energy policy interventions from both sides of Australian politics has been devastating.
Australia’s failed energy system crashes on economy
Leith van Onselen
Tuesday 18 March 2025Electricity prices soar by up to 9%
Labor’s 2021 Powering Australia Plan, released prior to the last federal election, promised that Australians would save $275 on their residential electricity bills by 2025 and $379 by 2030.
…
Last week, the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) announced that electricity bills will rise by up to 9% from 1 July. The largest jump will be seen in NSW (up to 9%), whereas QLD will see prices rise by up to 6%.
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Incitec Pivot has downsized its fertiliser production because of high energy costs. It closed its Gibson facility in Queensland in 2022, impacting 170 jobs. Incitec’s Geelong fertiliser business also closed last year, costing 40 jobs.
…Last year, Australia’s last major plastics manufacturer, Qenos, closed due to high energy costs, making Australia wholly reliant on imported plastics from China.
Australia’s only architectural glass manufacturer, Oceania Glass, closed last week after 169 years of operation.
…
Read more: https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2025/03/australias-failed-energy-system-crashes-on-economy/
The article blames gas exports for high prices, but why are gas companies prioritising exports over domestic consumption? Sometimes at a lower paper profit?
The answer is obvious – the export market is safer and more predictable. Exporters know when they sign those contracts that they will make money.
The same cant be said for the domestic gas market, which in Australia is subject to capricious government price controls.
While in theory the export market is just as vulnerable to government tinkering as the domestic market, in practice the integrity of the gas export market is protected by angry foreigners who threaten massive economic retaliation whenever Aussie politicians try to interfere.
There have also been hints gas giants will play the “Atlas Shrugged” card if the Aussie Government gets too interventionist. Argentina in particular is attracting attention as an alternative to Australia, they have vast, underexploited gas reserves. Pro-business President Milei, often described as the Argentina’s answer to President Trump, is pushing hard for businesses to invest in the vast Vaca Muerta shale gas field (estimated reserve 308 trillion cubic feet). While Argentina is not currently a serious player in the gas export market, and faces onto the Atlantic rather than the Pacific, it won’t take long for solutions to be found if there is sufficient demand. In a few years, Asia will no longer need to look to Australia for gas.
In the face of this threat of imminent demand destruction, why is Australia being such a troublesome gas export partner?
The reason for all this political foolishness is no mainstream Australian political leader is focussed on prosperity. With a few honourable exceptions, politicians on all sides of the Australian political spectrum are obsessed with tinkering with energy policy, trying to create an energy policy with offends the least number of voters, instead of an energy policy which works.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Australia could easily have the best of both worlds, by using cheap coal for domestic industrial energy, especially brown coal, which is immune to international price changes because nobody else wants it, and letting international trading partners have all the gas they want. Japan, which desperately needs gas, might be persuaded to stick with Australia instead of diverting development resources to places like Argentina. They might even be persuaded to build some new high efficiency coal power plants at rock bottom prices, in return for better long term access to Australian gas – if Australia acts quickly enough.
The mainstream opposition plan for a government funded nuclear programme is a step up from the incoherent renewable energy plans of the incumbents, but crisis hit Aussie manufacturing needs a solution which delivers now, not in 20 years. Nuclear will do nothing in the short term to alleviate the pain of Australian energy prices.
The long term benefits of nuclear are dubious for a nation like Australia. Nuclear is a viable technology, but Australia has lots of coal. The upfront capital costs of nuclear power are much greater than coal. With the opposition proposed government funded nuclear programme, all the capital cost of building nuclear power plants will pile onto Australia’s national debt, just as baby boom demographics are starting to bite. Even if the nuclear plants are completed, the cost of energy produced by nuclear plants will be significantly higher than coal – especially in a nation which is sitting on a mountain of accessible, shovel ready coal resources.
Don’t get me wrong, there are places in Australia where nuclear makes sense, where remoteness and a lack of local fossil fuel energy resources tips the balance firmly in favour of nuclear. Advances in nuclear energy could alter this balance further. But where coal is available, Australia needs a solution which delivers today, not 20 years from now, otherwise there will be no manufacturing industry to rescue.
Even if you think I am wrong about nuclear, we need something to tide us over while the nuclear plants are being built. Nuclear power plant construction is not something which should be rushed, especially in a nation as inexperienced as Australia.
The next Aussie federal election is 3rd May 2025. But whichever mainstream party wins, Australian manufacturers will lose. This Aussie federal election provides no prospect for relief for what is left of Australia’s manufacturing industry.
The money quote:
Steve, you are absolutely correct, but the fact is that incompetent politicians (and certainly not just in Australia) have been committed to ensure that the vast majority of voters have been lied to about the “Settled Science” of Global Warming / Climate Change / naughty CO2 and all the rest. Also about the alleged risks of nuclear that have kept prices high and completion dates so long.
Cui Bono?
Soros, Gates, Schwab and the rest, keen to overfill their boots with gold and power.
I recall a bit before the latest century turn, Australia built a nuclear power plant out in the middle of nowhere, but near bauxite mines. It was intended for producing aluminum. For a number of years after that, Australia was very competitive as a world source of aluminum automotive components. I retired from the auto industry after that, so I’m not sure if that remains the case. It certainly made sense to me at the time.
I think you recall incorrectly, Tom. As far as I know, the only nuclear site in Australia is for producing medical isotopes and, unless I am mistaken, there has never been a commercial nuclear power station in Oz.
“The article blames gas exports for high prices”
Yes, it does. Here is what it said:
“Electricity costs will continue to rise
Australia’s East Coast is scheduled to begin importing gas late this year, which will lock in import parity prices of around $20 per gigajoule (versus around $12 currently).
Before Australia began exporting gas from Gladstone, we paid around $4 a gigagoule.”
So why do producers give export priority over locals? Because domestic prices have not yet quite reached the export price.
Opposition leader Dutton wants to change that. He wants to introduce a gas reservation policy which, he says, would reduce the price to $10 per gigajoule. Producers would have to sell a quota at that price. And they don’t like it (of course). It won’t happen.
If Australia does anything to harm exports, companies like Inpex along with the Japanese and Chinese governments will crash the Australian economy.
In addition, Argentina will shortly liberate Asia from Australia’s incompetence. Even if Asia can’t get gas directly from Argentina, Argentina will saturate the European and American markets, liberating more Middle Eastern gas for Asia.
Australia has always fulfilled its export contracts. Peter Dutton says that would continue under his scheme. The brunt is borne by the Australian exporters, who would have to give Australians a share of uncontracted gas.
Forcing gas companies to sell at below market prices is fiscally equivalent to increasing taxes on gas producers, and using the revenue to purchase extra gas.
How do you think gas producers will react to yet another tax rise / price control initiative?
Will they:
a) Continue to invest in Australia, and pray there is no further deterioration in the business environment.
b) Run Australian gas wells into the ground, and divert investment in new production to business friendly prospects like Argentina?
“Run Australian gas wells into the ground”
Mixed metaphor. But the gas won’t go away (if not exported). Someone will continue to extract it and sell it. We had plenty of gas when the price was $4/PJ.
Still, Dutton’s backers will nobble the plan. It may not even last to the election.
Of course the gas will be extracted – but not necessarily by this generation.
I developed software for merchant bankers for a while, and learned a little about how they think. There is no malice in it, they assign a probable impact range to sovereign risk, figure out the cost of doing business (including bribes if required), and work out which opportunity maximises their return on investment.
If sovereign risk makes an opportunity unattractive, they pull out and wait for economic hardship to coerce the government into offering better terms.
They all use very similar models, and talk to each other, so they’ll all pretty much make the decision at the same time. And once they make the decision to pull out, it will take a lot to convince them the situation has changed.
I don’t know how close Australia is a global investor strike, but with big players like Inpex openly accusing Australia of “silent quitting” on gas, I’m guessing the situation in Australia is already being discussed.
“but not necessarily this generation“
The gas firms, which are mostly Australian, don’t own the gas. They hold a lease from the Australian Government which allows them to extract and sell it. If they stop doing that, they lose the lease. The Government will find someone else who will. They will get plenty of offers.
Will they? In the 90s Zambia discovered the hard way that having copper in the ground is not enough, you also need to offer a predictable investment environment. Venezuela is also learning the hard way that being too greedy deters investment, even if you have heaps of exploitable resources.
Australia is getting greedy, I’m not saying we’re at Venezuelan levels yet, but there are plenty of warning signs. And Australia is a long way from being anyone’s first choice, the time it takes ships to travel to Australia is dead money, it would be much more profitable if you could send the ships somewhere else, and pack more return journeys in the same period of time.
With large Northern Hemisphere gas producers like the UAE and Azerbaijan going big on gas, and Argentina trying to muscle in on the Atlantic gas trade, Europe and the Americas will soon be awash with gas. The UAE and Azerbaijan will likely then look to Asia to sell their surplus. Asia will soon have the option of ignoring Australia if they choose to do so.
Punishing gas investors in Australia with new taxes or price controls, right when new competitors are trying to muscle in, is very bad timing.
I am a Canadian O&G investor and I see that all the companies have switched to returning profits to the shareholders while minimising development investment. Government (fed) wants to phase out the industry. They used to put all the revenue into drilling.
Rudy
The Cdn. feds changed the tax rules in 2015 when Trudeau came to power. Many Exploration costs are no longer allowed to be declared as tax deductible expenses for Canadian tax purposes. Drilling funds that operated on a tax flow through became non-profitable. Many smaller exploration companies sold their producing properties to big guys and declared bankruptcy shortly thereafter. Big producers decided they were in favor of the tax changes since they inherited production, and there surprisingly wasn’t much in the media about it, overshadowed by the cancellation of pipelines based on the declared rights of albino bears in the newly named ”Great Bear Rain Forest”…which had been in the previous 60 years a numbered economic development zone in the British Columbia wilderness…..and the castration of National Energy Board permitted pipelines to ports by declaring that export permits would not be granted.
I lived through this…friends’ companies went broke…mine had reduce by half…people had to turn their keys over to the mortgage company…all because a group of people are using thermageddon to get themselves elected by condo dwellers who think that net zero can be achieved by turning down their thermostat and signing up their law office for the green electricity premium on their power bills and buying carbon offsets for their heating bill.
Rant mode /
Eric, the voice of rational experience!
Great article
And there goes Nick, with his patented distraction techniques.
Nobody said anything about stopping production. The issue is about forcing producers to sell at government dictate prices that are below the world price.
Quoth Eric, to which I responded
“If sovereign risk makes an opportunity unattractive, they pull out and wait for economic hardship to coerce the government into offering better terms.”
OR you just get some politicians with a backbone to take the system on .. Western Australia has had gas reservation since 1979 but then we had a real politician at the time.
Eric,
It takes years to build an LNG liquefaction plant and more years to develop the gas fields, pipelines and compressor stations that feed it. The media mixes liquefaction plants with LNG vaporization plants, which can built in about 8 months…cuz it’s only a huge cabin heater…easily manufacturable in any large welding facilities in numerous locations and countries worldwide, all hungry for work…
Argentina LNG is 6 or 8 years away…twice that long if the government starts putting their thumb on the scales….
Yep.
When you pander to every grievance voter, you finish up pleasing nobody.
All political parties put popularity before the populace these days.
Where’s Jeff Kennett when he’s needed?
In 2022 Tony Abbott spoke at CPAC in Sydney, trying to excuse and justify Dutton’s fence sitting. From what I can see, Dutton is still getting splinters in his butt.
Again, Australians are left with a no-win situation because of the leftist uni-party.
As for Dutton, you don’t get splinters from straddling a barbed wire fence. 😉
COAL and GAS…. we have plenty of both if these clowns would stop virtue-seeking over the fake CO2 scare, fracking, and other far-left idiotologies.
Strange thing is Australia is shutting out coal at home at the same time it is expanding its coal exporting projects with 46 out of 95 coal exporting projects currently underway worldwide.
16 of those projects are new, 28 are expansions of current projects and 2 are reopening projects. Next in the ‘league table’ are South Africa 14 projects and Canada 9 projects.
If the politicians are ideologically opposed to coal use at home why are they not opposed to exporting it for use abroad?
IEA ‘Coal 2024 Analysis and Forecast to 2027 (Dec. 2024)
Harold The Organic Chemist Says:
CO2 Does Not Cause Warming of Air!
Shown in the chart (See below) are plots of temperatures at the Furnace Creek weather station in Death Valley from 1922 to
2001. In 1922, the concentration of CO2 was ca. 303 ppmv.
(0.59 g of CO2/cu. m.), and by 2001, it had increased to ca. 371 ppmv (0.73 g/cu m.), but there was no corresponding increase in
the air temperature at this remote desert. The reason there was no increase in the air temperature at this arid desert is quite simple:
There is too little CO2 in the air.
At the MLO in Hawaii, the concentration of CO2 in dry air 424 ppmv
(0.83 g of CO2/cu. m.), a 15% increase from 2001. One cubic meter of this air has a mass of 1.29 kg at STP.
The above empirical temperature data shows that the claim by the IPPC and the unscrupulous collaborating scientists that CO2 causes global warming is fabrication and a lie. The purpose of this lie is provide the the UN the justification for the distribution of funds, via the UNFCCC and the UN COP, from the rich donor countries to the poor countries to help the cope with global warming and climate change. Another reason for this lie is to provide the justification for the maintenance and funding of these organization and also the IPPC. Hopefully, President Trump will put an end to the greatest scientific fraud since the Piltdown Man.
The chart was obtained from the late John-Daly’s website:
“Sill Waiting For Greenhouse” available at: http://www.John-Daly.com. From the home page scroll down to the end and click on:
“Station Temperature Data”. On the “World Map” click a country of region to access the temperature data from the weather stations located there. John Day found over ca 200 weather stations whose temperature data showed no warming up to 2002.
ATTN: Eric
Show below in the chart is a plot of temperatures at Adelaide from 1857 which shows a slight cooling up to 1999. Be sure to check out all the weather stations for Oz. The temperature charts show no warming up to 2000-2002.
The big question is: How can this data be used to put an end to the climate plans?
“The big question is: How can this data be used to put an end to the climate plans?”
This kind of data is one more nail in the coffin of the bogus Hockey Stick Chart “hotter and hotter and hotter” trend line.
The “hotter and hotter and hotter” Hockey Stick chart trend line is what Climate Alarmists use to scare themselves and others into believing that CO2 is causing the current increase in warmth we are experiencing, and tells them to throw away every power generation tool except for windmills and solar.
Unfortunately, integrating windmills and solar into the grid and retiring conventional power plants is what is causing the high costs of electricity and the economy of Australia to be on the decline.
But your temperature data does not have a “hotter and hotter and hotter” temperature profile. Instead, it has a benign temperature profile where it was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century as it is today, demonstrating that CO2 is a minor player in the Earth’s atmosphere and temperature, since it was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century, with less CO2 in the air, as it is today with more CO2 in the air. Increased CO2 has had no visible effect on the Earth’s temperatures..
Your regional chart is similar to every other unmodified, original, written, historic regional temperature chart. None of them have a “hotter and hotter and hotter” temperature profile, like the one the bogus Hockey Stick Chart shows.
So the question is: Where did the dishonest scientists who created the bogus Hockey Stick Chart get their data? Certainly not from the historic, written temperature records, like the one you show, because none of them have a “hotter and hotter and hotter” temperature profile. And the written, regional, unmodified temperature records are the ONLY temperature records available. They are all we have.
So one has to conclude that the Bogus Hockey Stick Chart was created using fake/modified data. That’s the only way it could happen. You can’t get a “hotter and hotter and hotter” temperature profile out of data that does not have such a profile. Right, Nick?
So Australian politicians are operating on a False Premise that CO2 is causing the Earth’s atmosphere to warm to catastrophic proportions, when there is no evidence that this is the case. Instead, there is a lot of evidence in the regional temperature records that this is NOT the case.
Australians need to get rid of their Delusional Politicians as soon as possible. And give up trying to reduce the benign gas, CO2. Only then will Australia thrive.
“Right, Nick?”
Here is another occasion where I question the creation of the bogus Hockey Stick “global” temperature chart, by pointing out that the Hockey Stick Chart “hotter ad hotter and hotter” trend line does not exist in the written, historic, regional temperature records, and ask the question: How do you get a “hotter and hotter and hotter” Hockey Stick Chart trend line from regional temperature data that does not have a “hotter and hotter and hotter” trend line?
And, as you can see, again, Climate Alarmists offer no answer as to why there is this discrepancy.
This is because they have no good answer. This is because the bogus Hockey Stick is a BIG LIE used to convince people that CO2 is dangerous to human beings. The bogus Hockey Stick is all made up in a computer as a means of promoting the Human-caused Climate Change narrative.
The population has been lied to about CO2 and the Earth’s climate.
Right, Nick?
If Nick doesn’t have a good answer, then there isn’t a good answer.
Right, Nick?
If there was a good answer, Nick would be jumping all over this question. But, not a peep out of him or any of the other Climate Alarmists that frequent this website. And we know why there is no answer. And so do the Climate Alarmists.
Right, Nick?
See what I mean.
Climate Alarmists have no answer because there is no answer.
You can’t get a Hockey Stick shaped chart out of data that doesn’t have a Hockey Stick shape.
I looked up some Adelaide numbers, and found something a bit different.
https://lindenashcroft.com/2022/02/15/paper-summary-the-worlds-longest-known-series-of-parallel-temperature-data-adelaide-1887-1947/
Don’t get me wrong, in my opinion Australia’s numbers are highly suspect, but it often takes someone on the ground looking through archives to untangle the mess.
We did an article about BOMWatch / Bill Johnston’s efforts to compare BOM narratives about temperature series. He’s been going through temperature station archives one at a time to unpick how the actual history of stations differed from BOM claims.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/02/04/changing-data-to-agree-with-the-narrative-the-sad-story-of-acorn-sat/
It seems that you made a mistake in your choice of a country to immigrate to Eric. Australia is just as stuffed as the UK.
There is a crucial difference – in the part of Australia I live in you can survive without home heating.
Well even “Nothing” is “Something” so they can do Nothing and still keep their promise
Doing Nothing simply allows the process to follow it’s destructive course to it’s ultimate goal and by “Allowing it to progress” they are in fact doing “Something”. Just not the Something other people had hoped for.
The price of LGCs is tanking in Australia. They are already down to $22/MWh. They are heading for zero well ahead of the 2030 end date for the RET.
https://www.demandmanager.com.au/graphs/price.php
Blackout’s capacity contracts through AEMO will shift the cost burden of post RET “renewables” onto tax payers rather than electricity consumers. There is already $20bn in AEMO contracts in the pipeline that Dutton will have difficulty undoing.
So there are good prospect of the next government actually delivering on electricity cost reduction and Dutton’s halving of fuel excise will provide immediate relief to car owners if he gets the gig.
The end of the RET will see new dynamics. Negative wholesale pricing will disappear. The lower price of LGCs is already causing a higher floor in the wholesale market around MINUS $20/MWh. There is some prospect of the remaining coal fired power station bidding all their capacity at zero cost to force WDGs out of the market. That means the coal fired plants would run flat out.
Victoria has mandated zero FIT from July for rooftop solar, The battery installers are going flat out out in Victoria on small battery systems. mostly 5kWh, so rooftop owners can load shift. A battery that size getting cycled daily will have a payback of 7 years at current prices. A bit longer if prices do fall or a bit shorter if prices continue on upward trend.
NSW has negative FIT in some regions or it is coming. So the writing is on the wall for rooftop owners. Rooftops are now recognised as a system cost rather than system benefit to the grid so the only way to make economic use of them is to install a battery so each household can load shift their own solar from lunchtime to the evening. The heat pump hot water storage systems do this as well. They can use solar to heat and then deliver their energy through the evening.
With Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber on the hustings I see the real estate hawkers could be looking for some light relief unburdened by what has been-
‘Is it April Fools already?’: Kamala Harris to speak at Queensland conference
That’s hilarious!
Don’t take *any* advice Kamala gives you, if you know what’s good for you.
Invite Kamala to become a permanent resident of Australia. Please! 🙂
Must admit when I first caught the headline I thought it would be some lefty uni kneesup as not even Labor could be that dumb bringing her for election support. If it’s not April Fools then the RE boys have a sense of humour and they’re bored with the usual pump up motivational speakers.
Invite Kamala to become a permanent resident of Australia. Please! 🙂
Come on, we haven’t been that naughty 🙂
Yeah Tom, that’s a bit harsh. Maybe send Tampon Tim to Oz though.
Almost as bad 🙂
Walz is worse, I would say. He can actually put two sentences together, although those sentences only make sense to radical leftists.
By the time red tape has been copiously applied in multiple entwined layers nuclear will be unaffordable.
Surely somebody has reached the stage where a pre-built reactor can be just shipped in and hooked up to the grid. Total lead time = 1 month maybe.
Australia, Canada, and the UK, all woke, and all going broke.
My money is on Mad Max.
NZ surely rates a mention as a founding member of the hopelessly lost club?
A choice between national suicide or a potentially prosperous future.
The high cost of nuclear energy is mostly a choice. The UAE chose to buy affordable nuclear plants from South Korea and establish affordable effective regulations. The US chooses to regulate nuclear energy to death.
Australia has a lot of uranium too. I think that small modular reactors could be a good fit for the country.
My concern is Aussie manufacturing needs the cheapest possible power, not that nuclear isn’t viable.
Renewables are not impractical. The fact is renewables don’t work. That will be the case until a town, city or island somewhere is able to maintain its electric grid on renewables without fossil fuels coming to the rescue. So far no working model has demonstrated that renewables can maintain a stable electric grid.
Vaca Muerta; Dead Cow.
Now that sounds like an interesting story.
Very nice Eric. You have pointed out many issues for Australia, I don’t know much about Australia except you guys kind of talk like Americans. The one thing I know for certain is that Australia does not have an energy problem. You have plenty of fossil fuels, some hydro and plenty of ability to start up nuclear. Australia has a government problem, there is absolutely no reason for Australians to be concerned about energy you have resources and talent that other countries can only dream of. Your government sucks, you guys have to do something about it. Australia needs to fire up its fossil fuel plants, build new fossil fuel plants, build nuclear plants and remove all wind and solar from the grid. Wind and solar don’t work, fossil fuel and nuclear do.
Eric,
The cost of future Australian nuclear can be estimated many ways.
One way not often discussed is the French way from a few decades ago.
By every measure I have seen, this French effort was affordable, routinely workable and overall profitable, even today. French nuclear is in place and operating, making France less affected by global and regional price chaos for other forms of electricity.
The main fundamental costs of a nuclear build have possibly fallen in real terms in the last 50 years as expansion to some 480 units worldwide has happened. We are more efficient at making nukes.
So, we can devise a French exercise for Australia and cost it. It should have little to do with politics or ESG or net zero carbon by 2050. Nuclear is a big boy now, able to stand on its own two safe feet.
Geoff S
It might well work out that way Geoff, but at the very least it’s a gamble. A bunch of Mitsubishi kit form coal plants would be erected on existing sites very quickly, they are mass producing coal plants for the African and Asian markets. Nuclear not so much.
It doesn’t matter what Australia does.
The UAE had 4 nuclear power plants (5.6GW capacity) built by South Korean consortium for an apparent all-up cost of some US$40B. This was done in only 12 years so the time frame is far less than the media here in Australia is screaming. The cost is also far less than the Net Zero renewables scam. The government is so terrified of the true figure being discovered that they won’t publish an estimate and that useless Energy Minister just ducks and dives any questions on this.
Furthermore, if the same designs are used and the same contractors are used, the cost and delivery time should both decrease in real terms. So, I do not share your pessimism and skepticism.
“The government is so terrified of the true figure being discovered that they won’t publish an estimate”
It’s the opposition proposing it. It’s up to them to provide an estimate. They won’t.