If a transition is affordable, it should progress over time from coal to gas to nuclear.
Suddenly reality has caught up with the United Nation’s COP talkfests but not with the Australian delegation.
More than 20 countries at the Conference on the Parties in Dubai at the weekend agreed to fast track nuclear energy by tripling its capacity by 2050.
However, the Albanese Government refused to sign, despite the failure of its windmill and solar panel program.
Instead, energy minister Chris Bowen remains determined to try and roll out 22,000 solar panels per day and 40 wind turbines per month by 2030.
Clearly this is just not going to happen.
The 20 COP28 countries signing the nuclear pledge also know from experience that renewables cannot provide reliable, let alone affordable electricity.
That’s why the French President Emmanuel Macron told the 17-year-old Nuclear for Australia founder Will Shackel (pictured above), who is in Dubai, “I hope that you will manage to lift the ban. Nuclear energy is a source that is necessary to succeed for carbon neutrality in 2050.”
Well done Will.
The nuclear pledge which Australia shunned is probably the most sensible initiative to come from the UN’s COP process.
The bi-partisan support in Australia of net zero has arguably done more to push up cost of living and inflation via high electricity bills than any other factor.
The Albanese government has made the pain worse by being even more aggressive in its pursuit of net zero than the Coalition, but the damage has been done by decades of bi-partisan taxpayer subsidies to windmills and solar panels.
Coalition politicians put Scott Morrison on the plane to Glasgow in 2021 where he signed Australia up to net zero by 2050.
Family First wants net zero paused until proper engineering and economic analysis is done so a rational decision can be made about the cost verses benefit.
Family First also backs lifting the ban on nuclear energy and is pleased to see the Dutton-led Coalition pushing for this despite its mistake in blindly supporting net zero.
Any net zero transition must keep electricity reliable and affordable and that most likely means that if a transition is affordable, it should progress over time from coal to gas to nuclear.
Gas and nuclear power generation can be built adjacent to existing transmission lines, something not possible for windmills and solar panels.
Renewables also have the problem of the non-existence of battery storage technology capable of running large cities for more than a few minutes.
The Albanese Government has sent 48 bureaucrats via jet aircraft with Bowen to Dubai, despite their belief that carbon emission are causing the planet to boil and that we face an immanent climate catastrophe.
It was ironic that jets destined to take global boiling evangelists to Dubai were stuck frozen to the tarmac at Munich airport.