Blackouts, bankruptcy and “bugger off Bowen” posters: Ted O’Brien’s dystopian and error riddled energy vision

Well, he is stubborn, and he’s not afraid of a hostile audience. Those were two of the immediate and more polite reactions at the Australian Clean Energy Summit on Wednesday when Opposition energy spokesperson Ted O’Brien laid out his vision to a room full of 1,000 clean energy investors, ministers, regulators and market operators, and told them why they are all wrong about the future of energy.

O’Brien’s appearance – the first by a federal Coalition energy spokesman or minister at the summit since the days of Josh Frydenberg – was delayed by traffic snarls in the city, but it wasn’t impeded by any diversion from his contention that it’s 2050, not 2030, that matters, and that nuclear is a must in Australia’s energy mix.

He attempted to paint a folksy picture of his concerns for the future, showing pictures of his children and making multiple references to his previous life as an economist and a businessman. But the details were just a little bit scary, and many of the claims plain wrong.

First were the predictions of blackouts, that O’Brien insisted the Australian Energy Market Operator had made for Australia’s main grid as soon as this summer. It’s a common refrain in the Coalition and the mainstream media. Actually, that’s not what AEMO has forecast at all.

Then O’Brien moved to the state of the economy and the increase in bankruptcies, and the hike in electricity prices that has – according to competition regulators – been almost entirely due to the leap in fossil fuel costs across the world.

He then focused on the environmental costs of building the 40 gigawatts of new wind, solar, storage and transmission needed to meet Labor’s 82 per cent renewable energy target by 2030. He included a photo of a protester carrying a “bugger off Bowen” poster.

O’Brien repeated the Coalition’s off-stated contention that Australia is the only one of the 20 advanced economies not doing nuclear or thinking about it. That’s still not true – Germany and Italy are two prime examples. Others such as Spain are moving to close down their last nuclear plants.

O’Brien says no other country has a renewable energy target like Australia’s. “We are on our own,” he said.

Again, that’s not true. Germany is aiming for 80 per cent renewables by 2030, Spain targets 74 per cent by 2030, and Denmark 100 per cent net renewables before 2030. Denmark might even get there before South Australia, which hopes to reach 100 per cent net renewables by 2027.

The federal Coalition’s plan is for nuclear power stations at at least seven sites across the country, and a mix of large scale and small modular reactors, which to all intents and purposes do not exist.

It says it can complete the first of these by 2035, which no one thinks is realistic. It hasn’t costed the plan or explained how it will be funded, apart from being paid for by government. It insists on the primacy of baseload, even though that is not practical in a grid with a high share of wind and solar.

The Coalition insists that the sites it has identified – mostly at existing or former coal fired power stations – will not require new transmission, even though that is disputed by network companies and state ministers. It insists that nuclear will fill the gap, even though the capacity they outlined is not nearly enough to meet demand forecasts.

O’Brien says his focus is on 2050, and presumably the common net zero target, although even that much was not made clear. If nuclear can’t be built on time, then even that long term target can’t be met, despite O’Brien’s stated concern for the future of his children.

There was no talk of any interim emissions targets, only the insistence that coal fired power stations should not close before a replacement was available. He included a picture of a man’s biceps to underline the supposed strength of his vision.

Ted O’Brien at the Australian Clean Energy Conference 2024 in Sydney.

The reality is that is no one outside the Coalition and its conservative supporters believes nuclear could be built in time to replace coal, and the market operator has made it clear that the biggest risk to energy security is on relying on ageing and increasingly unreliable coal plants.

The whole scheme makes no sense. O’Brien’s claims that nuclear power is cheaper than renewables, that it can be built quickly, and that it won’t need new transmission and doesn’t need storage is not supported by any evidence or energy experts.

The Australian Energy Regulator boss Clare Savage said in the preceding session that just writing a regulatory framework for nuclear would take eight years. Savage – and most in the industry agree – that nuclear couldn’t be possible in any great quantity until around 2050. And coal fired power won’t last anywhere near that long.

“There’s a reason why every energy economist, every energy player, every market person, and the market operator is saying the same thing, this doesn’t make sense for Australia,” former Coalition prime minister Malcolm Turnbull told the summit in the following session.

“It’ll be too costly and too late, as (AEMO boss) Daniel Westerman said yesterday. It’s politics. It’s differentiation. And, and, you know, frankly, it’s being promoted in a fact free media ecosystem, which is where much of the writer politics lives nowadays.”

And the head of long duration storage company Hydrostor, which is based in nuclear-dominated Ontario, reminded us that nuclear very much needs a lot of storage. “Ontario in Canada will be releasing an RFP in the next couple of months for 1000s of megawatts of long duration storage,” Jon Norman said, noting it was needed to soak up excess nuclear.

But what of the Coalition plan for the Australian renewables industry and the $70 billion of private investment that will be unlocked for new wind and solar by the 2030 target?

O’Brien and the Coalition has not made clear how much they want or will allow. The Nationals have said they don’t want any and will rip up contracts written by the federal government in the Capacity Investment Scheme.

O’Brien says some renewables will be allowed, but only “high quality” projects. Renew Economy asked O’Brien afterwards, but was told only the Coalition wanted an “all of the above” approach before he was hustled away by his media minder.

There was no indication of how much, or whether these would require transmission lines that the Coalition opposes. He spoke of more storage, particularly for households, and a lot more gas.

“We believe that storage is going to be absolutely key and the policies that we are putting together and we will soon release, you will see the importance of looking at renewables including storage to households, for businesses, and for communities. We need to pour more gas into the system.”

The promise is of more details of his plan in coming months. But everything is vague. He talked of “black holes” in the energy supply under Labor’s renewable plan, but the biggest black hole appears to be the gap between the Coalition’s plan for nuclear, keeping coal plants open and what keeps the lights on in between.

O’Brien finished and received some polite clapping from an industry disappointed and regretful that their first Ted Talk was confirmation that even though this might just be a stunt, the energy wars are well and truly back. Then he left.

On the way out Renew Economy asked for more details about the Coalition’s renewable plans. How much will be built, will it need transmission that you want to stop building?

O’Brien wouldn’t say, only to insist that the Labor target is not achievable, and seemed to confirm that the plan is to keep coal online until nuclear is ready, which won’t help Australia’s emissions reduction efforts, given that the grid is about the only sector to make any progress so far, and might not keep the lights on or the bills down either.

“The principle for us is to ensure we have a balanced energy mix, and that includes renewables, gas, and as coal retires from the system, zero emissions nuclear energy,” he said. Good luck with that.