The 2025 federal election is still some months away, but the unofficial campaign is off and racing, with the prime minister and the leader of the federal opposition both traversing the country this week to court votes on the issue of the day – cost of living.
The cost of energy – to business, industry and households – will be central to this and Peter Dutton, for his part, is betting the Coalition’s fortunes on a plan to introduce nuclear power into Australia’s mix for the first time in its history, in the midst of a market well on the way to 82 per cent renewables by 2030.
Dutton’s claim, based on much criticised modelling by Frontier Economics, is that his party’s nuclear plan will deliver power bills 44% cheaper than they would be under Labor’s plan for renewables.
There is plenty of highly credible research to skewer this claim, not least of all the latest draft GenCost report from Australia’s premier science agency, which finds integrated renewables are by far the lowest cost option for Australia as it seeks to quit fossil fuels.
But some of the best evidence that nuclear power is anything but cheap comes from the real-world experience of recent projects in other countries – countries with an existing nuclear fleet – where plant development or refurbishment costs just keep blowing out.
Unfortunately for Peter Dutton, a fresh example of this phenomenon has cropped up just this week, from the UK and Sizewell C nuclear power station planned for construction in Suffolk.
Reports emerged on Tuesday in the Financial Times that the final price tag for the Sizewell C project, which is being developed by French giant EDF, is likely to reach close to £40 billion – nearly double the original estimate of £26 billion.
The £40 billion figure, attributed to “one senior government figure and two well-placed industry sources” has since been rejected by EDF as “not accurate,” although the company declined to put its own figure on the likely cost.
EDF also said the £40 bn sum was not reflective of the “significant savings” made by building on the achievements at Hinkley Point C, which is currently under construction in Somerset in the UK.
But Hinkley Point C – the only new nuclear power plant being built in UK at the moment – is famously delayed and over budget. Having set out in 2016 to be operational this year at a cost of £18 billion, it is now due to start generating in 2029 at the earliest, and cost up to £46 billion.
“That project has done the hard job of restarting UK nuclear construction and is seeing efficiency improvements of around 30% between its first and second reactor units,” the EDF statement said.
“It means we are starting construction with a completed design, a skilled workforce and a supply chain ready to deliver.”
This comment is important in light of the fact that Australia would be building a nuclear industry from scratch – starting with amending legislation.
According to the FT, nuclear power currently supplies about 14 per cent of the UK’s electricity, with all but one of its current ageing fleet of plants is due to close by March 2030, potentially sooner if planned life extensions cannot go ahead.
Nuclear power is also a contentious subject in the UK, with the FT citing Dale Vince, a major Labour party donor and founder of green energy company Ecotricity, as warning that Sizewell C “will saddle consumers with higher bills long before it delivers a single unit of electricity.”
“Nuclear is too expensive, too slow — and very expensive to contain at the end of its life,” he told the FT.
A similar argument has emerged in Australia this week, with new figures from the Smart Energy Council contending that power bills would be $220 higher in 2030 under Dutton’s nuclear power plan – again, before any actual generation has been built.
The SEC says this added consumer cost would be chalked up solely to the absence of support for energy efficiency policies from the Federal Opposition.
Image credit: Smart Energy Council
That’s on top of the previously identified minimum 33 per cent increase in power bills for all Australians, and a doubling of power bills for Australians with solar panels.
Image credit: Smart Energy Council
Households in Australia’s NEM would therefore be over $8 billion worse off by 2030-31 were the Federal Coalition’s nuclear dreams be made a reality.
“Peter Dutton’s nuclear policy will burn a massive hole in your wallet,” said Wayne Smith, acting chief executive of the Smart Energy Council.
“If you have solar, your power bill will double. It will be harder to save money with energy efficient appliances like heat pumps and more efficient air conditioning, fridges and TVs because there will be fewer, if any, national incentives. Your power bills will go up and up.
“Australians want to live in comfortable homes with energy efficient appliances that save them money and Peter Dutton will stop that from happening. The Federal Opposition has refused to release a single policy to promote energy efficiency. They clearly want Australians to pay more for power.
“Australia is already rolling out cheap, reliable renewables. Power bills are going down. We just need to stick to the plan.”
When Peter Dutton released the Coalition’s costings for its nuclear plan in mid-December – to build seven nuclear power plants across the country at a cost of $331 billion – he claimed Australians would save “up to $263 billion compared to Labor’s renewables-only approach – a 44 per cent saving for taxpayers and businesses.”
However, the Coalition’s own report, completed by Frontier Economics, explained on page 18 that “We do not, at this stage, present any results for the prices” of the various modelling it had carried out. Analysis of the report also concluded that the Frontier modelling relied on energy demand not increasing as much as the government expected.
This is in stark contrast to the report published by Australia’s CSIRO GenCost report which found that nuclear would cost around twice as much as solar and wind power.
The Australian Climate Council reiterated these findings in its own analysis of the Coalition’s costings plan, with up to $490 billion worth of costs underestimated or excluded entirely, revealing that the nuclear fantasy would cost more than twice as much as what has been claimed.
And there are numerous further concerns over the introduction of nuclear into the mix in Australia, including the inherent incompatibility of the technology with even the current mix of renewables, let alone with a grid running on 82 per cent renewables and above.
Separate SEC analysis published in mid-December showed that the introduction of 14GW of nuclear power into Australia’s grid would force up to 5 million existing rooftop solar systems to be switched off and cause the average power price bill to more than double.
At the same time, the Council expanded on its research, showing how forcing nuclear power into Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) would also affect electric vehicle (EV) uptake.
The SEC says that by forcing nuclear into the NEM and forcing rooftop solar systems out, cost savings from charging an EV using power from rooftop solar systems would evaporate, costing at least 2.1 million Australians as much as $2,000 a year in savings on their fuel bills by 2030.
