Dan Tehan fails to grasp difference between baseload and firming as he sprouts nonsense on nuclear

The Australian Energy Market Operator, along with the owners of the country’s biggest fleets of coal generators have painted a pretty clear picture of the energy future: Forget baseload, it’s time has come and is going and almost gone – the future is about renewables and firming power.

It shouldn’t be too hard a concept to grasp. Low cost wind and solar will provide the bulk of the electricity supply, including and particularly from the rooftops of homes and businesses, and excess power will be stored in batteries at home and on the grid, and flexible “firming” assets will fill the gaps.

The focus on flexibility is the key. Firming assets might not be needed often, or even for long, but they will need to be switched on and off relatively quickly. Flexible demand side management will also play a key role, as will a focus on efficiency.

Australia’s operational paradigm is no longer ‘baseload-and-peaking’, but increasingly it’s a paradigm of ‘renewables-and-firming’,” AEMO boss Daniel Westerman said last year.

It’s a crucial point to understand. “Baseload” is not so much a technical virtue as a business model – the people who invest in coal generators, and nuclear in particular, count on those machines operating at or near full capacity most of the time.

Without it, they haven’t a hope of repaying the money that it took to build their facilities. They can flex a little, but the last thing they want or can do is dial down and up again on a daily or even hourly basis. Other machines are better equipped at doing that, and at much lower cost.

As the ANU’s Centre for Energy Systems wrote this year, the energy industry is aware that baseload is not just endangered, it is already functionally extinct. And they explain why in more detail.

Enter the Coalition’s new energy spokesman Dan Tehan, who quite clearly has not got the memo, and clearly hasn’t the foggiest idea what he is talking about.

Tehan has been on a “fact finding” tour of energy facilities in the US, which appears to have included no renewables, but a lot of nuclear, and – having briefed Coalition colleagues early in the week – he was keen to share his new-found knowledge with the ABC.

“Do you accept that expertise of the Australian energy market operator when it comes to base load power and the transition that’s underway?” Tehan was asked on the 7.30 Report.

“Well, your quote said it all there, Sarah,” Tehan replied. “Renewables and firming, and what nuclear can do is provide that firming over time, it can replace gas and coal, which are providing that firming at the moment.”

Clearly, he was already confused by the difference between baseload and firming. And then Tehan said this: “So my argument is as a replacement for diesel. When it comes to mine sites all that firming capacity over time, that’s exactly the role that nuclear can play.”

Mine sites, it should be noted, use little in the way of gas and diesel capacity. Maybe 10, maybe 20 megawatts (MW). And they are now rarely switched on. Most new mine sites are running on an average 80 per cent renewables, even those partly owned by arch-renewables critic Gina Rinehart.

BHP is sourcing the bulk of its electricity needs for it massive Olympic Dam mine and refinery and nearby sites through two “renewable baseload” contracts with Neoen comprised only of wind and battery storage.

But Tehan was back at the ABC on Thursday morning, this time on Radio National, where he was extolling the virtues of “easily transportable” micro-reactors sized he said – and wait for it – between five and 10 gigawatts!

“And the particular thing that was really of note to me was how the research into micro reactors, so small, sort of five gigawatt, 10 gigawatt reactors, which are very transportable,” he said.

We suspect he meant megawatts, not gigawatts. (A gigawatt is 1,000 megawatts). And, we should point out, these micro reactors do not exist in any commercial form, and it’s doubtful too that they would be “very transportable”.

Tehan said he is convinced that in the US there is a “nuclear renaissance”, despite the recent World Nuclear Industry Status report pointing out there is no such thing. “The simple fact is … that there isn’t a single power reactor under construction in the 35 countries on the American continent,” ACF’s Jim Green writes.

Tehan insisted that 30 nations at COP29 had signed up to triple the amount of nuclear capacity. True, but they said they would do that over a 25 year timeframe, by 2050 – with the aim of lifting global capacity from around 350 GW to just over 1,000 GW.

In the meantime, a total of 120 countries have signed up to treble renewables – in just over five years – from 3,500 GW to 11,000 GW. That is 11 times more capacity than nuclear in one fifth of the time. It is pretty clear to everyone – except perhaps for Tehan and his friends – where the money is going.

And as AEMO’s Westerman told an energy summit hosted by The Australian last week, Australia is experiencing a “stunning democratisation” of energy generation, thanks to rooftop solar and consumer batteries.

Which means that they too will need the grid for “firming”, rather than baseload. Such a dramatic reshaping of the grid will leave no room for nuclear, or any other “baseload” power source. But Tehan and his mates seem intent to jam it into Australia’s energy debate, even if they can’t get it into the grid.

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