Journalists are obsessed with the new. We cast around every day to tell audiences something they don’t know. That’s the job.
Sometimes, when we get it right, we reveal information that’s substantial and deserves exposure and scrutiny. Sometimes we aim for a different type of revelation – one that comes from picking apart and giving context to claims that are demonstrably not true, but have been repeated so often they have become a regurgitated part of public debate. This fact-checking role can feel repetitive and, frankly, exhausting. But it’s also part of the job.
It’s been a major part of reporting on the climate crisis and Australia’s policy response to it. Since the 1990s, we have seen facts twisted and corrupted until the truth has been muddied, and sometimes lost. Misinformation campaigns have colluded with spectacular political failures (see: the implosion of the last federal Labor government) to set back even modest attempts to start cutting Australia’s greenhouse gas pollution and prepare for a zero-emissions future.
The misinformation was once most often straight-up climate science denial. Over time that’s become less common from public figures, though it still exists. These days the arguments from those opposed to tackling rising emissions are more often renewable energy denial – the idea that you can’t run a modern economy on solar and wind backed by energy storage and other “firming” technology.
Attacks on renewable energy have escalated since the Albanese government was elected in May 2022 saying it would deliver 82% of national electricity demand from these sources by 2030. In reality, it just promised a step up from where the country was headed. Government agencies had already forecast the country would reach 68% renewable energy under the Morrison government, even though it had no serious climate policies and was trying to put the brakes on the solar and wind expansion. The reason? Coal plants were shutting and investors deemed solar and wind as the best options to replace them.
The pushback against renewables kicked into gear once federal and state governments started grappling with what it meant to move from a predominantly coal-based system to a grid dominated by sun and wind. That included underwriting new solar, wind and batteries and building the transmission connections needed to plug the new plants into the grid.
The on-ground anti-renewables movement is dispersed, often in regional areas, and connected through Facebook and other social media hothouses where facts mostly go to die. Not all of it is driven by renewable energy denial. There are people with heartfelt and legitimate concerns about what developments in their area will mean for nature and agricultural land. Clearly, not everywhere is suitable for a renewable energy project, particularly the case given the dire and deteriorating state of Australia’s unique fauna and flora.
But the movement has also been fanned by people with no interest in local concerns. Some are fringe dwellers who believe plans to tackle the climate crisis are part of a global conspiracy. Others are more cynical, and politically motivated.
In both camps, some are more energised by a fight against their perceived ideological enemies than the specifics of what they are opposing. This approach can be summarised as: if my idiot opponent likes it, it must be stupid and bad.
Which brings us to the claims that Australia needs nuclear energy because we can’t replace the wave of coal power exiting the system without it.
This argument falls comfortably into the not new, repetitive and, at times, exhausting category. In most cases it is underpinned by an apparent certainty that renewable energy just can’t do the job, and an out-of-hand dismissal of evidence that says otherwise.
Politically, nothing much has changed since June, when Peter Dutton and the Coalition climate change and energy spokesman, Ted O’Brien, announced seven sites where they say the opposition would build nuclear generators if it regained power. More detail had been expected before parliament returned last week, but none was released.
There are still no cost estimates. There has been nothing to back up the widely disputed claim that Australia could have an operational nuclear industry before the 2040s. There has been nothing to explain Dutton and O’Brien’s assertion that nuclear would lead to a “cheaper, cleaner and consistent” electricity grid. There has been no clear explanation of why they don’t agree with government agencies and the range of independent experts who have rejected their arguments.
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On Sunday, the Nationals leader David Littleproud was challenged on the ABC’s Insiders about whether the Coalition planned to cap the amount of renewable energy coming into the system, as he had previously claimed. He replied there would “not necessarily” be a “hardline cap”, but the opposition would propose “market signals” to back nuclear energy and fossil-fuel gas, and this would limit investment in renewables.
Let’s consider what this actually suggests.
It says a Dutton government would take steps to slow viable electricity generation coming into the system while the system faces a cliff, with 90% of remaining coal plants forecast to have shut by 2035. It disregards the Australian Energy Market Operator’s blueprint for an optimal future power grid, the integrated system plan published under both the Coalition and Labor, that has found we could run the country on a more than 90% renewable energy grid.
It instead puts weight on a nuclear plan that would have to clear colossal political, logistical and social licence hurdles, and even then could deliver only a fraction of Australia’s electricity needs – much less than the 40% that already comes from renewables. It would not kick in until the coal fleet was gone. According to the CSIRO, it could cost $17bn just to get one generator in the ground.
Its also puts weight on gas-fired electricity. Gas is the most expensive fuel in the national grid, and gas power is mostly turned only on at times of high electricity demand. It is forecast to have a role into the future, but largely as a fast-starting gap-filler deployed in bursts and burned in relatively small amounts. This reflects not only its cost, but that gas is methane – a potent fossil fuel – and releases carbon dioxide when it is burned.
These are the facts of the issue. They don’t have the flash of the new, but while this remains the Coalition’s position they will be a central part of the story of the next election. We’re going to need to keep returning to them for a while yet.
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