Canberra Times
Monday 27/11/2006, Page: 9
The panel couldn't ask key questions, but there's no reason for us to avoid them, says JIM FALK.
GIVEN its origins and the composition of its panel, the nuclear taskforce report chaired by Ziggy Switkowski, and issued last Tuesday, is in some respects surprisingly downbeat.
It supports uranium mining and nuclear power, but - for at least the medium term - effectively rejects uranium conversion, uranium enrichment, fuel fabrication and spent nuclear fuel reprocessing, and all but ignores the original requirement to investigate the "business case" for establishing a repository accepting high-level nuclear waste from overseas.
The Switkowski report stresses that nuclear power could be competitive only if a substantial carbon tax is imposed, and estimates the cost of nuclear power to be 20-50 per cent greater than the cost of electricity from coal. Even this seems an optimistic assessment.
The narrow terms of reference set by the Federal Government restricted the Switkowski panel to a study of nuclear power, not a serious study of energy options for Australia. As a result, the main problem with the report is that it simply misses the point.
A panel with a broader range of expertise and a less limited brief could have been asked to explore the impact of carbon tax and other policy measures on energy demand. It could have tackled the most effective means by which that demand could be met, and greenhouse emissions reduced, taking into account all the energy options, costs, time frames, waste, safety and other relevant issues.
The report simply accepts that energy demand will grow remorselessly along a projected curve. But it also proposes imposition of a carbon tax in which the cost of electricity will significantly increase.
Of course, as we know with water, in this situation, the simplest thing when a resource becomes harder to buy, is to use it less wastefully. Similarly, a host of studies show that the potential for removing energy wastage is large, and that a dollar invested in energy efficiency will produce some two to seven times the returns in energy and emissions savings versus a dollar invested in new nuclear power.
While the Switkowski panel was prevented from asking key questions, there's no reason for the rest of us to avoid them. A body of existing research indicates that the objectives of meeting energy demand and reducing greenhouse emissions can be met with a combination of renewable energy and gas to displace coal, combined with energy efficiency measures, without recourse to nuclear power.
For example, a study by AGL, Frontier Economics and WWF Australia published in May 2006 finds a 40 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation in Australia can be achieved by 2030 at the modest cost of 43c a week a person over 24 years. A detailed study, A Clean Energy Future for Australia, by Hugh Saddler, Richard Denniss and Mark Diesendorf, identifies methods by which a 50 per cent reduction in greenhouse emissions from stationery energy generators and uses can be achieved by 2040.
The Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change, and the Renewable Energy Generators Australia, have produced research on climate change abatement strategies. Many studies dispel myths which, unfortunately, have been promulgated by Stvitkowski this week, such as the claim that only coal and nuclear power are suitable to provide reliable baseload power.
This claim is an oversimplified rendition of the complex question of how to provide statistical reliability in an energy generation system. Different technologies present different challenges. Nuclear reactors are stable while they work, but when they have an "outage" they can leave a big hole in supply. Once a reactor shuts down it can take days or even weeks to restart.
There are renewable energy sources which are at least as reliable as nuclear power, such as bio-energy, while geothermal "hot rocks" technology may provide another energy source in the near future.
While a single wind turbine cannot be relied upon as a constant source of power, wind farms spread over a wide area provide a reliable power source. Studies of Australian wind patterns have shown wind power, supported by a small amount of peak-load plant, can substitute for and hence may be regarded as equivalent to base load.
Energy efficiency and waste-saving measures are too often ignored. Apart from their other advantages, energy-efficiency measures can reduce the demand for both base-load and peak-load power. Energy-efficiency measures can also deliver large reductions in energy consumption and greenhouse emissions.
The Australian Ministerial Council on Energy published a report in 2003, Towards a National Framework for Enemy Efficiency, which concludes that "consumption in the manufacturing, commercial and residential sectors could be reduced by 20-30 per cent with the adoption of current commercially available technologies with an average payback of four years".
But as Switkowski has stressed in recent appearances, the taskforce was not charged with assessing those issues. Rather it was to look at the possibilities of a nuclear future.
Will the Prime Minister now convene a panel to explore the potential of a non-nuclear future for Australia supported by rapid development in renewable energy sources and energy efficiency? It is hoped he will, or better still, the Government will simply get to work supporting the implementation of the myriad of clean-energy solutions to the problem of climate change, such as those identified by the Ministerial Council on Energy.
Professor Falk is director of the Australian Centre for Science, Innovation and Society at the University of Melbourne. The centre assists the development of the Energyscience Coalition which provides briefing papers at energyscience.org.au
0 comments:
Post a Comment