 Found a word you're not familiar with? Double-click that word to bring up a dictionary reference to it. The dictionary page includes an audio sound file with which to actually hear the word said. |
Further implications
Australia confronts a potential energy crisis. The country faces three converging exigencies - the immanent closure of all coal-fired power stations, an anticipated decline in renewable energy projects, and increasing electricity demand.
In December 2023, the Australian Energy Market Operator announced that Australia's coal power stations would all be closed by 2038 - five years earlier than expected.
This is not the result of penalties imposed by governments seeking to meet emissions targets. It is the result of ageing power plants that private owners, foreign and Australian, do not consider sufficiently profitable to refurbish. Coal-fired power plants are suffering from the commercial pressure created by solar-generated power. In the financial year ending June 2024, renewables contributed 39.4 percent of the nation's total electricity production according to the Clean Energy Council's most recent report. Just rooftop solar now accounts for 11.2 percent of Australia's electricity supply. What complicates this picture is that renewables' success has not been fast enough. There is also concern that the impetus may be levelling out or trailing off. While rooftop solar and investments in battery development, large and small, continued to grow, investments in renewable energy plants slowed in 2023. Financial approvals for new solar farms shrank over a third and no new wind farms won backing. By the end of that year, Australia had 56 renewable energy projects under construction, down from 72 the year before.
One of the major disincentives to further development in the renewable sector is that the distribution network is not keeping pace with the construction of solar and wind farms. The Australian Energy Market Operator estimates that 50 percent of the transmission needed to deliver a clean, reliable, affordable energy supply in 2050 must be constructed in the next six years. At present, renewable generators are forced to connect to existing lines, which have become congested. So even when new renewable installations are approved for construction, their output can be curtailed because they are unable to reach their consumers. Power distribution networks in Australia are in a patchwork of hands which makes co-ordinated development more difficult. Currently, Victorian, and South Australian networks are 100 percent privately owned, while Tasmanian, Western Australian, Northern Territory, and Queensland electricity networks are 100 percent government-owned. Compounding these issues further is that electricity demand is expected to increase across Australia as the economy recovers from the pandemic and population growth continues. Increased demand will put further upward pressure on prices.
From the mid-2020s, consumption is projected to accelerate due to the anticipated increase in the number of electric vehicles. Growth in the use of AI is also expected to increase Australia's electricity usage. According to the International Energy Agency, an AI Google search consumes 10 times the electricity of a standard search. Electricity supply problems have already been observed in the United States because of the commercial use of AI. However, the Australian Energy Market Operator has not yet factored AI into Australian electricity producers' future challenges. Where does this leave the debate around Australia's use of nuclear power?
Three issues appear to make it an unwelcome intrusion into this complex of problems. Firstly, it seems unlikely that nuclear plants will appear on the scene soon enough, or generate enough power, to cover the early closure of coal-fired power plants. Secondly, they are unlikely to prompt governments or private owners to improve Australia's electricity distribution networks and boost further renewables development. Peter Dutton has stressed that nuclear power stations would use existing distribution networks. He is anticipating a 'mixed system' of nuclear power and renewables, yet he appears not to have allowed for smart grids to facilitate this nor the problems created by trying to integrate nuclear power into a mixed system.
Finally, diverting investment into nuclear power would take finance away from the renewables anticipated to produce most of the country's power.If the Coalition's scheme were adopted, the shift from coal-fired power stations to renewables would slow beyond the present decline in projected start-ups. Were this to happen, state and federal governments would have to subsidise coal-fired plants to induce them to remain in operation past their preferred closing dates, as is already happening in New South Wales.
The Coalition plans to increase gas-generated electricity in the bridging period before its nuclear power stations come online. The Labor government has estimated that closing the electricity gap with gas power will increase gas usage to 2035 by five times the existing annual production. Currently more than 80 percent of Australia's gas is exported, placing artificial pressure on domestic supply, inflating prices, and creating a justification for new drilling. Further, even with additional drilling, most of Australia's undeveloped gas reserves are in the north of the country, requiring new pipelines or LNG terminals to service southern population centres. Thus it seems the plan to build these nuclear plants may protract the problem of uncertain electricity supply rather than provide a solution. The only sector immediately to benefit appears to be the fossil-fuel industry.At a National Press Club address given on February 26, 2024, mining and renewable energy magnate Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest claimed, 'If you think that nuclear came out of nowhere, no, it didn't. It's been pushed by the fossil fuel sector as a great way to delay the whole country for 20 years from switching over to cheaper energy.'