If you thought Coalition leader Peter Dutton’s plans for a nuclear-led transition for Australia’s ageing coal fleet was bizarre and reckless enough, you haven’t heard half of it.
Dutton last week was musing about his nuclear plans and competing technologies in front of reporters and an ABC TV crew, and in a few phrases neatly summed up everything he and his Coalition policy makers fail to understand about the energy grid, the renewable energy transition and the urgency to act.
“We just can’t pretend that solar panels work of a night time, and we can’t pretend that wind turbines – 260 metres out of the seabed – are environmentally conscious,” Dutton said. “And we can’t pretend that that is a baseload energy. It’s just not. Hopefully, the battery technology is about to be discovered, but not yet.”
Yep, that’s what he said. You can watch it here, and the above quotes are copied and pasted from the transcript published on Dutton’s own website.
We don’t know whether Dutton is forgetful, badly briefed, or deliberately obtuse.
But let’s just go through this nonsense line by line because it underlines the sheer ignorance and bloody mindedness of the Coalition energy and climate policy, and why have they chosen a costly and impractical non-solution to Australia’s urgent climate challenge.
First, there is the observation that solar panels do not work at night, made with the Air of Importance typical of renewable energy critics convinced they have just made an extraordinary revelation. Did the solar industry not know that the sun sets in the west, every day, and then it’s night? And if they did, why was this kept a secret?
Then this: “We can’t pretend that wind turbines – 260 metres out of the seabed – are environmentally conscious (sic).”
Let’s just assume that Dutton’s language ended up as mangled as his policy position, but let’s also make it very clear that wind turbines are not sentient. Mind you, it would beg a fascinating question: If you think a wind turbine is waving at you, is it polite to wave back?
Dutton’s reference to the “baseload” question is important because it goes to the heart of why the Coalition and its advisors have little understanding of how the electricity system works, nor the transition that’s happening around them.
“Let’s not pretend that wind energy is baseload,” Dutton says. No, let’s not. Actually, no one is. And, just to be clear, the electricity market is moving away from baseload towards renewables and flexible dispatchable capacity, commonly known as storage but also including concepts such as demand response.
The very idea that you need baseload nuclear to “back up” and fill the gaps between wind and solar is just wrong.
In fact, because of the sheer size of the large scale nuclear generators the Coalition is now contemplating – after cottoning on to the fact that commercial SMRs do not exist – will require even more back-up. Baseload is not the answer, flexible and dispatchable capacity is.
Finally, Dutton says he is looking forward to the day that battery storage is “discovered”. We look forward to the day that Dutton realises that battery storage has already been “discovered”, in fact some time ago.
The biggest big battery – the Waratah Super Battery (850 MW and 1650 MWh) – is being built at the site of a shuttered coal plant and will be bigger than the biggest coal unit in the country, and quicker, cleaner and infinitely more flexible.
There are now dozens of big batteries operating and under construction around the country, and tens of thousands of small batteries in homes and businesses, providing a multiple of valuable services and assuming an increasingly prominent role in the management of the grid.
Why bother with all this? Why take issue with the opposition leader’s “mis-speaks”? Because in just a few phrases Dutton has revealed the sheer lunacy and ignorance and bad faith that underpins the Coalition energy and climate policy.
It’s a nonsense – as virtually everyone in the energy industry knows – and no amount of strident support from Murdoch media and conservative think tanks will change that. But because the majority mainstream media can’t and won’t call him out, too many people take it as read. And that is not good.
