Australia is not killing koalas to make way for solar farms, says Albanese

Prime minister Anthony Albanese has rejected claims that koalas are being killed to make way for solar and wind projects, or that wind and solar farms are causing more environmental damage than they are preventing.

The questions emerged in an interview on Rockhampton radio station 4RO on Thursday, and – while seemingly bizarre – are symptomatic of the extraordinary and growing campaign against renewables, batteries, and EVs that is being waged in Australia and overseas by conservative parties and media.

Albanese was appearing on 4RO a day after news of a fire in one of the Tesla Megapack modules at the Bouldercombe big battery near Rockhampton. The fire was contained to a single module, caused no injuries, and is not expected to have a big impact on the facility.

The fire was seized upon by anti-renewable campaigners, such as LNP Senator Matt Canavan, as proof that the transition to renewables was unsafe, unreliable and toxic. He was slapped down quickly by energy minister Chris Bowen on Wednesday, and Albanese joined in on Thursday when asked about it.

“Some of the scare campaign that I’ve read about saying this means all renewables are all bad, is just wrong,” Albanese said, pointing to the massive explosion that took out the Callide coal plant two years ago – it is still not repaired – and data that shows EVs are 80 times less likely to catch fire than petrol or diesel cars.

Albanese was then asked about solar and wind projects.

“You’ll be well aware of concerns about the wind and solar farms, that they’re actually doing more damage to the environment than they’re actually supposed to save,” he was asked on the breakfast program by Aaron Stevens.

Albanese said community consultation was important. “But I’ve never seen a solar farm that caused grief for a local community. I travelled up to, just a fair way north of you, but if you look at Big Kennedy and Little Kennedy and the projects that are around Kidston and around that northwest Queensland region. The communities there are incredibly excited because what it’s brought is jobs and activity there.”

He was then asked about koalas. “We’re hearing that koalas are being killed in their own habitat to build some of these solar farms and to build these wind farms?” Stevens asked.

Albanese said he had not heard of any such claims. “Suggestions like where?” he responded. “I have not heard that that is the case, that people are out there killing koalas. I have not heard that.”

But such claims do abound, along with equally questionable assertions that solar farms 70 kms from the coast are damaging the Great Barrier Reef, or that wind turbines cannot spin by themselves and require diesel of coal fired generators to turn them around.

If that sounds ludicrous, it is. But many renewable energy developers say they are being quoted such stories on a regular basis as they talk to communities about project proposals.

It appears to part of an intense and well-funded global campaign to demonise renewables, push for a technology that does not yet exist (small nuclear modular reactors), and ignore the growing science that calls for a fast track of net zero targets to 2035.

That campaign is being led on the Australian political scene by the Nationals and Liberal parties in Australia, eagerly supported by Murdoch media and largely unchallenged by other mainstream media.

It is being joined by the absurd claims about wind and solar and battery storage circulating on social media, and some completely bizarre and ill-informed attacks on institutions such as the CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator.

In the US, Donald Trump has renewed his nonsense claims against new technologies, saying earlier this week that “windmills are causing whales to die in numbers never seen before”, and on Wednesday US time turned his attack on EVs.

“The damn things don’t go far enough and they’re too expensive,” he said. He then claimed that electric cars are “much worse” for the environment and tried to stoke panic about electric boats: “Do you get electrocuted if the boat sinks?”

He said pro EV policies were the work of “Joe Biden and the radical left, Democrats, and fascists — marxists.”

Albanese was also asked about nuclear on 4RO. He responded, accurately, that there is not a single credible investor in Australia that wants to invest in the technology, because of its cost, and the time it takes to get built.

“So, nuclear works in many countries where they have a nuclear industry. In Australia, you cannot find any serious investors who are prepared to undertake it because it doesn’t stack up compared with the alternatives of renewables,” he said.

“And that is why the direction of the country is going that way. And that’s what all of the energy experts say.”