From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones.
This is seven am. The Liberal Party says it wants the next election to be a referendum on energy. After months of waiting, Opposition leader Peter Dutton finally released the cost of his nuclear proposal proof Dutton says that nuclear power will be cheaper than renewables and save all Australians money on their energy bills, but his modeling stands in sharp contrast to that of Australia's top scientists and the
energy industry. Today National correspondent for the Saturday Paper like second on how the numbers stack up and whether that matters to voters eager for lower power bills. It's Monday, December sixteenth, Mike. On Friday, Opposition leader Peter Dutton announced the long awaited costings for his party's nuclear policy plan.
So tell me what he said.
Well, first observation about time. We've been waiting for this for months and months and months. You know it was all very optimistic modeling right. What happened was on Friday morning, Peter Dutton stood up at a press conference in Brisbane. Beside him were the Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor, the Shadow Climate Change and Energy Minister Tat O'Brian and the Leader of the National stated little proud.
This is a plan which will underpin the economic success of out country for the next century.
And they presented this final piece of the coalition's vision for a nuclear future. You know, the economic modeling that they claim shows that their policy is actually financially viable. In fact, they argue that it will come in substantially cheaper than Labour's path to net zero.
This will make electricity reliable, it'll make it more consistent, it'll make it cheaper for Australia, and it will help us to carbonize as a trading economy as we must. So.
Under their plan, nuclear energy would account for about thirty eight percent of the Australian energy mix by twenty fifty, which is when we're supposed to get to net zero. Of course, renewables would cover fifty four percent and the rest of it, which about eight percent, would come mostly from gas and from a bit of storage. They had previously announced a plan to build seven nuclear reactors around
the country, which will be publicly owned. The first of these reactors would be operating by twenty thirty five, or they're about so ten or eleven years away, and according to their modeling, their plan would cost three hundred and thirty one billion dollars over the twenty five years out to twenty fifty. And that is two hundred and sixty three billion dollars they claim, or forty four percent cheaper
than their estimate. And it's important to say their estimate of what Labour's path to net zero would cost.
That's around ten billion dollars every single year.
And you know, the Shadow Energy Minister Tetobrand simply said that prices ultimately reflect costs over time, so you know their pitches. It will cost a great deal less to build a system and as a result, power will be cheaper for everyone.
Right, okay, so tell me how Peter Dutton came to these figures.
Well, it's down to economic modeling, of course, which you know it depends entirely on the assumptions you put into the model, and this I have to say includes some rather dubious and occasionally troubling assumptions. For one, it's assumed that Australia's geriatric I think you could safely call them very breakdown prone col fired power stations, most of which will be shuttered within a decade, and all of which are currently scheduled to be closed by twenty thirty eight,
will continue to operate for some years longer. It's not entirely clear how many years longer, but somewhere in the three to five years range. Another assumption is that they will get the first nuclear power station up and running
eleven years from now, in twenty thirty six. They've also assumed that Australia's electricity demand will rise by considerably less between now and twenty fifty than it is currently forecast too, and in part that's based on things like they expect that Australia's uptake of electric vehicles will be much slower than current forecasts. So all of these things indicate that we're going to continue to pump out greenhouse gases at
a greater rate than we would otherwise. The other big assumption is that nuclear generation will cost far less than the CSIRO and others say. Their other claim is that there will be savings from not building unnecessary infrastructure, by
which they mean mostly transmission. So they're saying that they will be able to plug nuclear power stations into already existing transmission lines rather than having to build new transmission, as is the case with renewables, which tend to be located in sunny end windy places away from a lot of infrastructure. So all of this is based on modeling from this bunch of climate consultants called Frontier Economics, which is run by a guy called Danny Price.
Right, and who is Danny Price.
Well, he's an energy economist and a consultant and he's worked for both sides of politics. He actually has a pretty strong track record, I have to say, you know, he's worked for Labor as well as the Coalition, most recently, I believe for the Labor government South Australia. The other thing that is notable about Danny Price is that he seems to have fallen out with just about anyone who's
anyone in the energy space. You know, the former Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the former head of the Australian Energy Market operator Ordrew Zibelman. He said that her agency should simply be abolished. I actually spoke to Price last week and he expected that he would be criticized for this. He wears it as a
badge of pride. Quite frankly, he's always up for a stoush and like I said, the view of various policy experts that I spoke to was that he was a competent economist, but also someone with very st opinions and a tendency to respond forcefully to those with whom he disagrees. And the other thing to say about him is that he has a way of getting headlines for the work
he producers. For example, he came up with a figure for costing the current government's renewables plan that was five hundred billion dollars higher than the Australian Energy Market Operator estimates it will cost. Bottom line, his modeling is not without controversy, and it also stands in pretty stark contrast to the work of a lot of other experts and agencies like the CSIO. It would suggest, you know, he's a bit outside the mainstream in his views and perhaps a bit of a contrarian.
After the break the science that contradicts the coalition's claims, so Mike.
On Friday, the coal.
Released its numbers for its nuclear policy, and that was based on this modeling from Frontier Economics run by Danny Price. Around the same time, though the CSIRO actually also released a report into nuclear power.
So how did the two compare.
The CSIRO, Australia's premiere scientific organization in association with the Australian Energy market operator and stakeholders in the energy business, dropped their latest annual gen Cost Report, which sets out to work out the relative costs of different ways of generating electricity.
Say, the CSIRO has found once again that nuclear power is about fifty percent more expensive than renewables, so, in other words, would cost twice as much to build.
And what the CSIRO report found again for the seventh year in a row, was that my father the lowest cost means of generating electricity was renewables, wind and solar, even when you include you know, firming with batteries and all the rest of it. Not only a renew's cheaper, but they're continue to get cheaper. So large scale solar and battery storage are two areas with huge price drops. Solar has dropped eight percent in the past year, and
it dropped eight percent in the year before that. Battery storage dropped twenty percent in the past year alone, so the alternatives to nuclear coming down dramatically in price. The other thing about gen cost is of course that it reckons that we can't build nuclear in the timeframes that Danny Price and the opposition are suggesting. It's saying at
least fifteen years away. And the problem with that, of course, is that coal power is scheduled to be shut down within less time than that, so in the meantime we will extend the life of coal. But the coalition also says that we will rely more heavily on gas generation while we wait for nuclear, and gen cost says that gas generation is if you include carbon capture and storage, which would be necessary if for we're to make it carbon neutral, would be around the same cost as nuclear.
So there's pretty big differences there, I think you'd say, between what gen costs and the CSRO are telling us and what the opposition modeling is telling us.
And so how is Peter Dutton responding to criticism of his nuclear plan and the reports that contradict his costings.
Well, I wouldn't say that Sarah was specifically criticizing his nuclear plan, but you're right, they come up with vastly different costs, and really Dartnes's response was simply to shoot the messenger.
It just looks to me like there's a heavy hand of Chris Bowen in all of this, and I don't think people want to see that. I think what they know from Chris Bowen at the moment is that he's wrecking the energy system and that's wrecking the economy.
He immediately came out and said that the government had meddled and that CSRO was not politically independent and that Chris bow and the Energy Minister essentially had his thumb on the scales.
Peter dunt't wants you to believe that he can introduce the most expensive form of energy and somehow that will reduce power prices. A EMO and the CSIRO say nuclear is expensive.
And Chris Bowen, in contrast, came out and said that Danny Price was a Liberal party operative and that his modeling was also politicized.
The choice between Peter Dutton and the CSIRO, I go with the CSIRO.
So we've got both sides attacking the impartiality of the experts that the other side is relying upon. The real test here is probably whether whether it matters to voters and whom the voters decide to believe.
So what do you.
Think that voters will make of Peter Dutton's plan, Mike, Because you know, he said that he wants this coming election to be a referendum on energy. So do you think that voters are going to support this particular vision.
Look, frankly, I have no idea. I think voters are mostly concerned with cost of living, and so Peter Dutton has pitched this very much as the cost of living measure. We'll have to wait. I mean, they have dropped this enormous report from Danny Price. It's just dazzled you with economic jargon and numbers and calculations. I can only assume that every other economic modeler in the country is now going through it with a fine tooth comb, and we'll
see how it holds up. I have to say previous modeling done for previous iterations of Coalition climate policy, not done by Danny Price, but done by other people engaged by them, have not held up well in retrospect, and nor for that matter, has some of the modeling that was done by labor You'll remember that Labour Right relied on economic modeling to say that power prices would decrease
under them, and they haven't. They've gone up. So you know, modeling is very vulnerable to the assumptions that go into it, and it's also vulnerable to changes in circumstance. I mean, in the case of Labour's modeling, the change in circumstances was the Ukraine War that drove up power prices all around the world. So we're talking about something that has to foresee what might happen over the next twenty five years. And that's a very hard ask.
And as you say, Mike, so much of the messaging around this energy plan is about cost, and you can see why, but or what about the climate crisis? What does Peter Dutton's plan mean for emissions compared to Labors.
Well, I think in a nutshell, what the opposition is saying is, Okay, we will run more coal for longer, we will run more gas for longer, and then in due course, somewhere down the track they will come in with all this nuclear that will get us to net zero BO twenty fifty. Frankly, the thing that matters here is our overall emissions, what they call the carbon budget. And I haven't done the calculations, but it's hard to see how this will not put a big hole in
our carbon budget. The other thing is there's a political consideration here. Of course, for Dutton and the Opposition, which is that there are still within the ranks of the coalition parties, particularly in the National Party, a bunch of people who don't even believe that climate is a thing. And there's a bunch more who are very reluctant to
take the kinds of steps that are necessary. So as far as the politics of it is concerned, this is a very convenient thing for Peter Dutton because for those inner city liberals who realize their constituencies want something serious done about climate change, well they can say we will, but it will take a little while. And for those Nationals in the regions and others, they will say, yeah, well, you know, we've kicked the can down the road by ten or fifteen years and they can give a wink
and not to their constituents. So it's a very neat political way of papering over divisions within the coalition and I think to a substantial extent that was always its intent.
Mike, Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you for yours.
Also in the news today, a severe heat wave is set to continue across much of Australia until the middle of the week, with the Bureau of Meteorology issuing heat wave warnings for all states and territories on the mainland. The heat wave will hit Victoria and New South Wales today, where some inland areas may exceed forty five degrees and Kevin Andrews is being remembered as a Conservative warrior and loyal colleague after he died on Friday following a year
long battle with cancer. MPs across the political spectrum have shared statements of condolences for Andrews, who represented the seat of Mensies in Melbourne for over three decades and served at various times as Minister for Defense, Social Services, Immigration and Workplace Relations. Hen Ruby Jones, this is seven am.
It's hee tomorrow