Liberal frontbencher casts doubt on Coalition claims renewable energy is driving up power prices | Energy

The federal Liberal frontbencher Simon Birmingham has cast doubt on the Coalition argument that renewable energy is driving up power prices, saying renewables have “become more cost-competitive in their own right”.

The shadow foreign minister and opposition leader in the Senate told Guardian Australia in a podcast interview reliance on renewables is increasing because they are becoming cheaper.

“I want to see renewables, both small scale and large scale, play a continued role,” Birmingham says on the Australian Politics podcast. “They’ve been the recipients of significant incentive and subsidy over the years but they’ve also become more cost-competitive in the energy market in their own right. And so much of the market will now drive that rollout and take-up of renewables into the future.”

The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, and Nationals leader, David Littleproud, this week named seven proposed sites for nuclear reactors under a future Coalition government. They argued that nuclear power would be cheaper and suggested the rollout of renewables was fuelling high energy prices.

“My job is to provide an environment where electricity is cheaper, it’s consistent, it’s cleaner,” Dutton told ABC television on Friday. “We can do that through nuclear power.”

But energy analysts have told Guardian Australia that slowing the rollout of renewables and relying more heavily on gas in the 10-15 years before nuclear power could be introduced could increase Australians’ energy bills by up to $1,000 a year.

The Green Energy Markets director Tristan Edis said the wholesale electricity price was set by the most expensive fuel source being used at any give time.

Edis said those prices were “very high” – up to $300 per megawatt hour of electricity, or about three times the average price – whenever fast-start gas plants were used to complement cheaper coal, solar, wind and hydro energy.

Labor has also been critical of the plan. The government services minister, Bill Shorten ridiculed the nuclear power plan on Friday, saying Dutton was “now running for prime minister of La La Land”.

Birmingham confirmed that he supported investment in large-scale renewable energy projects and said he was confident the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy would not undermine investment in that sector.

But his argument that the falling price of renewables made them attractive to both investors and energy users and would secure their place in the energy mix appeared to be at odds with Littleproud’s suggestion that the nuclear policy enabled a Coalition government to wind them back.

”What we’ve announced today reduces the need for as much industrial-scale renewable energy,” Littleproud said on Tuesday. “That’s a good thing for regional Australia, particularly when we’re going to be the ones that host it.”

Littleproud said renewables would play “a significant role in our decarbonisation” but he did not support large projects requiring new transmission lines.

Birmingham defended the nuclear power policy and said Labor’s plan to reach net zero involved an “imaginary promise” that it could get there without a clean, baseload power source as part of the transition.

Birmingham backed “appropriate” emissions reduction targets at “five-yearly intervals” but said modelling them was better done in government. He defended the Coalition’s decision to abandon the current 2030 reduction target of 43% and defer naming an alternative until after the election.

“It is just as detrimental, if not even more so, if Australia ends up in a position where targets are being set that we fail to meet and we make promises that we are seen to have broken,” Birmingham said, adding that targets must be achievable.

Birmingham predicted that if the Coalition won the next federal election, its nuclear policy would split the Labor party and that breakaway Labor supporters of nuclear power would help pass the necessary federal legislation.

He said the controversial nuclear power policy made the Coalition a “big target” politically but argued that starting a major national debate could help lift its primary vote and peel support from independents.

“Bigger ideas, clearer choices, strong debates between the major parties will probably drive stronger votes for them,” Birmingham said. “There will be a clear choice. And I expect that may well put a floor under major party votes and even potentially bring voters back to them.”

The nuclear physicist Ziggy Switkowski, who led a Howard government examination of the viability of nuclear power, has acknowledged next-generation nuclear reactors would come at a high cost. But he told Nine newspapers their value in the form of reliable baseload power justified the expense.

“Nuclear will hold its own, particularly now that globally the sentiment has shifted,” Switkowski said.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, seized on Switkowski’s comments.

“The truth is that even someone who is a so-called advocate can’t say that it’s anything other than the most expensive form of new energy,” Albanese told ABC Television on Friday.