Election Watch: Energy flattery and Coalition’s blackout panic button

How far will flattery get you? The Coalition is hoping it’ll get them into government. When asked about the construction of nuclear power in communities in Australia, Dutton said:

“So, I think in the Hunter, and elsewhere to be honest, people realise that if there’s not a replacement industry for coal, then these jobs go, and that’s the reality. There is a much higher energy IQ in these communities than what we see in the cities”

If that sounds familiar to you, that’s because Dutton and the Shadow Energy Minister Ted O’Brien have been dropping it semi regularly when attempting to justify building nuclear power stations in Australia:

May 2024: “Well, interestingly, when you have a look at the communities where there is a high energy IQ, that is where they’ve got a coal fired power station now, people are in favour because they understand the technology”

August 2024: “We have a higher energy IQ, particularly in the West, but in those communities where there is a coal fired power station now”.

July 2024: “These people in this town – this great town of Muswellbrook – are positive. They can look to the future. They’re not ignorant, they’ve got good energy IQ, they understand it”

July 2024: “Talking to locals today again goes to the high energy IQ that these local communities have. They get it”.

June 2024: “When you go into these communities and understand the approach, there’s a high level of energy IQ, I might say, within many of these communities because people are working in the energy industry now, or they’re associated, they’re a subcontractor to the coal fired power plant, or there are generations of their family who have been involved in the provision of those services”

March 2024: “The energy IQ within communities where there are coal fired generators, understand particularly, the baseload argument”

August 2024: “We want to have a look at end of use coal fired power station sites – for a couple of reasons. One is, because there’s a high energy IQ within those communities, and those communities know that when the coal fired power stations come to an end of life, that your job is going to go”

Amusingly, the Coalition’s phrase is reminiscent of the World Coal Association’s rebrand to “FutureCoal: The Global Alliance for Sustainable Coal” (seriously), in which they fret about ‘anti-coal sentiment’ having “resulted in a lowering of the global coal IQ”.

O’Brien seems to have sourced this phrase from Rita Meyer, CEO of Wyoming Energy Futures and that itself seems borrowed from Chris Levesque, CEO of US nuclear power company TerraPower (backed by Bill Gates), back in 2022.

It was in reference to the Natrium project – a small nuclear reactor announced in 2021, which broke ground a few months ago and will purportedly begin operation in 2030, according to TerraPower (that has already been delayed from a 2028 start).

TerraPower’s CEO used the phrase in the context of the community actively requesting the construction of a nuclear power plant (that is tough to verify) – but that certainly doesn’t seem to be the case for the regions Dutton and O’Brien are talking about.

Dutton and O’Brien are weirdly implying a sort of unintelligence in the hundreds of communities across Australia that host and welcome large-scale wind and solar projects, and trying to flatter the sites of their proposed nuclear plans (none of which will eventuate if they win the election).

And in the same press conference, Dutton flips to trying to spread fear rather than counter it, claiming Labor’s clean power plans will cause catastrophe.

“There will be blackouts,” he says. “The renewables energy only mix that he’s got on the table at the moment is a recipe for higher prices and Australians just can’t afford three more years of the Albanese Government”.

This song has been playing a long time. As I wrote in my book, the 2016 blackout in South Australia reconfigured energy politics around empty and badly under-scrutinised claims of blackouts.

The politics and projections of blackouts have always badly exceeded the actual incidence of them, as I wrote here. For the past two decades, blackouts caused by failures at the generation level have been exceedingly rare, as the percentage of clean energy has risen from 8% to around 40%.

It’s not clear this whiplash approach of fear and coaxing makes much sense at all. We’re clever if we accept nuclear, and we’re simple and ignorant if we accept wind and solar, or if we don’t fear it. Might be better to address the real concerns of voters?