Bowen says Coalition attack on CSIRO and AEMO is wrong and “unbecoming”

Federal energy minister Chris Bowen has defended key government agencies, the CSIRO and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, against the unrelenting and false attacks from the Coalition opposition over the two organisations’ cost estimates for renewables and nuclear.

The federal Opposition has now declared openly that it wants to stop renewables and the roll out of new transmission lines, and keep coal plants operating while waiting for nuclear power plants that might be more than a decade away.

Such a move would not only bring Australia’s decarbonisation efforts to a halt, particularly on the grid but also other industries that depend on it, but also raise costs as nuclear is widely seen as the least flexible and most expensive new generation option.

The federal Coalition, with the ardent support of Murdoch media, has been attacking the CSIRO “GenCost” report and AEMO’s Integrated System Plan – which clearly state that renewables and storage are the cheapest options.

The Coalition and Murdoch columnists pretend that neither include transmission and storage costs (even though AEMO has said quite clearly that they do).

“Far too many newspaper column inches are being spent on what is a rather large attempted distraction; the idea of nuclear power of Australia,” Bowen said in a speech on Tuesday.

He said the Coalition’s description of the GenCost report, put together by CSIRO and AEMO, as “Labor’s GenCost” was particularly galling.

The GenCost report, like the ISP, has been produced for a number of years. In fact their first editions came out under the federal Coalition government. Their costings have changed little since, other than to note the downward trend of wind, solar and storage.

AEMO last week slammed the Murdoch media’s attack on the ISP, amplified by the Coalition, that it did not take into account transmission costs, and insisted that wind, solar and storage was clearly the cheapest option for Australia, by some distance.

Bowen pursued that line.

“The implication that this (the GenCost report) is anything but the most rigorous and independent work of two respected and independent agencies is unbecoming and inaccurate,” he said.

“I’ll say it simply: nuclear power for Australia doesn’t stack up.

“We hear a lot about small modular reactors. In some ways SMRs are small.  Their output is low: 300MW compared to around 2GW for many power stations.

“In other ways they are not small.  Conservative estimates put their cost at $5 billion.  Likely much more. $5 billion for 300MW is a lot of dollars, for not many megawatts.

“The AEMO and CSIRO Gencost report has made clear the hierarchy of costs: renewables being the cheapest and nuclear being the most expensive.

“With the more likely high end cost of SMR power being $349 MWh while firmed renewables are $100 at the highest possible end, and as low as $65 MWh.”

See also: Stop renewables and wait for nuclear: Nationals stunning rejection of science and industry