By PHILIP HOPKINS

 

AN independent report by a leading consultant shows that the Labor’s Party’s ‘renewables only’ energy plan will cost Australians at least $642 billion, according to the federal Opposition.

“This is five times more than they have told the Australian people,” Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Ted O’Brien said.

Mr O’Brien was speaking after the release of a report by Frontier Economics (FE), which has been providing independent economic analysis on key energy transition decisions in Australia for 25 years.

The report is the first of two reports from FE that aims to help inform the debate about the economics of including nuclear power in the National Electricity Market (NEM).

The managing director of Frontier Economics, Danny Price, said the work in both reports was funded and directed solely by Frontier Economics.

“Consultation with various government and private sector parties was sought, to ensure we modelled the inclusion of nuclear power in the National Energy Market most accurately,” he said.

“There is a large amount of ill-informed and misleading cost comparisons being shared about nuclear power in Australia, and Australians deserve better analysis and commentary to make the right decisions for our energy future.”

Mr O’Brien said the Frontier Economics analysis of Labor’s plan for the National Electricity Market accounts for utility-scale generation, storage and transmission.

“Frontier Economics found that the government’s plan conceals significant costs. These include transmission projects and other large projects they treat as ‘sunk costs’, even though they still need to be paid for,” he said.

Mr O’Brien said Labor’s unrealistic targets for electric vehicles, green hydrogen, and renewables was leading to a costly overbuild of the electricity grid.

“Australians will end up footing the bill,” he said.

“Transmission project costs have already had huge cost increases. This will continue, which means the $642 billion cost is likely to be an underestimate.”

Mr O’Brien said Labor was dishonest in its claims about the shutdown of coal plants.

“Labor says 90 per cent of coal power will exit the grid by 2034. However, coal plant owners say 10.8 GW of the coal Labor says will be gone will still be operating,” he said.

Labor was quietly imposing a carbon price by stealth – a ‘Value of Emissions Reduction’ charge, which starts at $70 per tonne and rises to $420 by 2050.

“This shadow carbon price is used to force in their renewables only mix. The cost of this will be borne by Australians,” he said.

Mr O’Brien said Australia faced a choice between two very different energy futures.

“One is Labor’s ‘renewables only’ plan. This relies almost exclusively on wind and solar technology and effectively puts all our eggs in one basket,” he said.

“The other is the Coalition’s plan for a balanced energy mix. This includes renewables, gas and zero-emissions nuclear energy replacing coal as it retires from the system.”

Mr O’Brien said now that the real cost of Labor’s plan had been revealed, the Coalition would finalise and release costings by the end of the year for an alternative plan with a balanced energy mix, including zero-emissions nuclear energy.

“This will give Australians a side-by-side comparison of the true costs and benefits of both approaches,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Federal Minister for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Bowen, said the Opposition’s costing figure was wrong.

“They’ve been making up numbers about everything but the cost of their own policies,” the spokesperson said.

“AEMO are the experts who run the energy market. Their Integrated Systems Plan looked at the total cost out to 2050 of the entire generation, storage and transmission of renewable energy and came up at $122 billion.

“The Coalition should be honest with the Australian people and release their own costings for their risky nuclear scheme, which has been costed by energy experts at $600 billion and will drive up energy prices and emissions while providing only four per cent of the energy Australia needs.”

In Australia, the communities identified by the federal Opposition to potentially host zero-emissions nuclear power plants are those surrounding former or existing coal plants: Loy Yang; Tarong and Callide in Queensland; Mount Piper and Liddell in New South Wales; Collie in Western Australia; and the Northern power station in South Australia.