Australia must overcome “poisonous political troika” stopping climate action, Turnbull says

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has told a book launch in Canberra that political interests were the only thing holding back an Australian transition to clean energy technologies, suggesting the Morrison government’s reliance on as yet unproven technologies to achieve its zero net emissions target was “rubbish”.

“The reality is that right now, the only obstacles to the energy transition – the transition to clean, cheaper, reliable, zero-emission, energy – the only obstacles are political ones,” Turnbull said.

“When politicians say, ‘oh, we need new technologies, technologies yet to be developed’ – they are talking rubbish. We have the tools to do the job today.”

Turnbull was speaking at the launch of a new book at the Australian National University on Wednesday evening – a compilation of analysis and insights from a wide range of Australian researchers on optimal climate policies.

The book, Transitioning to a Prosperous, Resilient & Carbon-Free Economy is being pitched as a decision making guide for policymakers about how to best approach climate change and the development of potential policy solutions.

Turnbull contributed the forward to the book, in which he notes the book is not an examination of the political discourse around climate change, lamenting that “there wouldn’t be enough room for the science and engineering if it was.”

Since leaving politics, Turnbull has taken an active and direct interest in the development of Australia’s clean energy sector, investing in ventures like 5B’s rapidly deployable solar power technologies and working with resources billionaire Andrew Forrest to pivot the Fortescue Group into green hydrogen, taking on the position of chair of Fortescue Future Industries’ Australian arm.

During his address to the ANU, Turnbull said that Australia needed to overcome the efforts of a ‘poisonous political troika’ that has sought to hinder Australian action on climate change.

“We’ve got to stop being caught by this poisonous political Troika that has so bedevilled climate policy in Australia for so long,” Turnbull said.

“Right-wing politics, populist politics and science-denying politics. Right-wing media, principally that owned by Mr Murdoch. And of course, the vested interests of the fossil fuel lobby. Probably the only rational part of that Troika.”

At the launch, Turnbull suggested that vested interests were working to delay the adoption of renewable hydrogen, and that they were drawn from the same industries and lobby groups that campaigned for support for ‘clean coal’.

“Green hydrogen is the hydrogen that can decarbonise so many of those difficult areas, like steelmaking, like cement, like shipping, heavy transport, and so forth,” Turnbull said.

“But we’ve got to be very careful of all of the distractions and diversions. The people that are bringing you blue hydrogen, or clean hydrogen, are the same people that brought you clean coal.”

“Just remember that we have the tools to produce zero emission hydrogen, we have the tools to produce zero emission electricity, they are there,” Turnbull added.

Speaking at the launch, ANU researcher Dr Fiona Beck, who convenes the university’s Hydrogen Fuels Project and contributed to the book, echoed Turnbull’s comments on the development of a low emissions hydrogen industry, questioning the priority that carbon capture and storage technologies have been given in the Morrison government’s low emissions technology roadmap.

“The sort of focus on CCS technologies in the low emissions roadmap is not really the best way forward for the hydrogen industry,” Dr Beck said.

“Now, CCS is going to be important in order to reduce emissions in industries where we don’t have any other solution at the moment.”

“But since we have a solution for making hydrogen in a clean way, and fully renewable, then I feel that that’s something that we should be going in 100 per cent and not being distracted by CCS,” Dr Beck added.

ANU professor Ken Baldwin, who serves as director of the ANU’s Grand Challenge, ‘Zero-Carbon Energy for the Asia-Pacific’, said there were real economic benefits to be seized in embracing an ambitious transition to clean energy and the electrification of industrial energy use.

“If we can convert all our electricity generation to renewable and zero carbon electricity, and then propagate that through the system by replacing every other form of energy use, whether it’s gas heating, whether it’s oil for transport, whether it’s coal for blast furnaces, replace all of that with electricity – and you replace blast furnaces with steel production that uses hydrogen and renewable electricity –  If you can do that, then you’ve addressed pretty much 70 to 80 per cent of the emissions in any country,” Baldwin said.

“The main game is using cheap, renewable energy to transform the electricity system and then to electrify everything else. And you can actually make money by doing this because now renewables are the cheapest form of electricity generation,” Baldwin added.

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