Peter Dutton’s commitment to abandon the Paris Agreement in favour of a nuclear-powered net-zero option will have every teal MP smiling, and a few would-be teals thinking hard about what Liberal seats might now be in play.
True, the opposition leader hasn’t said outright he’s walking away from the Paris Agreement. But however much he and his ministers might wriggle, that’s exactly what he’s committing to in saying he’ll ditch any shorter-term targets in favour only of net zero by 2050. Dutton, at least, has bowed to facts and logic about nuclear power, which he now admits can’t happen before the 2040s — and which means he will need to fund fossil fuels to keep powering Australia until the first reactors begin producing energy.
The problem for Dutton is that even if you believe in his nuclear-fairies-at-the-bottom-of-the-garden, under the Paris Agreement you can’t just leave cutting emissions until the last minute. Every five years, countries have to submit more ambitious nationally determined contributions. The next one is due next year and Australia’s existing NDC is a 43% reduction on 2005 levels by 2030. Abandoning that in favour of “We’ll do 90% in 2045-50” won’t wash. Nor will “We won’t make our existing NDC so we’re dropping it”.
Dutton’s journey on nuclear power has consisted of a series of stumbles and trips accompanied by a dogged insistence that nope, everything is fine. First it was to be all about small modular reactors, with conventional nuclear reactors dismissed as Soviet-era relics. That fiction couldn’t be maintained after the solitary SMR being built in a Western country was abandoned as it was far too costly for consumers.
Then the big nukes policy was to be unveiled before the budget, until Coalition MPs — who didn’t fancy going into the next election campaign telling voters they’d be next door to a nuclear reactor — jacked up, indefinitely delaying the announcement.
Then the costs and delays in building a nuclear power plant were detailed by the CSIRO, which warned getting a nuclear power plant going before the 2040s was implausible at best. After suggesting the CSIRO had got it wrong and was biased, Dutton has now acknowledged at least some aspects of nuclear reality.
We still don’t know who’ll be living next door to a nuclear power plant, of course, or how the tens of billions of dollars needed to build them will be funded. Or what happens when — inevitably — the costs and delays blow out.
All along, critics said it was a scam so that the climate denialists and fossil fuel interests who control the Coalition could prop up coal-fired power stations and gas — which will require billions in subsidies. They’ve now been vindicated by Dutton’s admission that that is exactly what they will do.
Dutton’s commitment introduces a strong element of sovereign risk for investors in renewable energy. Why commit money to build large-scale solar or wind power if Dutton is promising that, from 2025, renewables will be abandoned in favour of subsidies for fossil fuels? It also hands every teal MP a simple message at the next election: a vote for a Liberal MP is a vote not merely for no climate action, it’s a vote for actually going backwards and lifting emissions above our current targets — and at taxpayer expense.
And that’s before the far right and hardcore denialists within the Nationals have their way and start pressing for new coal-fired plants to help “keep the lights on” while we wait for nuclear power.
Labor must be unable to believe its luck. Not merely has Dutton handed it the gift of linking himself to nuclear power, but the government can also pose as the party of climate action, when it is anything but. Labor might argue it is within touching distance of its 43% target, but its “gas-fired recovery” and plans to expand gas exports and fund the fantasy of carbon capture and storage will undermine any emissions reduction benefits it might achieve domestically. That nuance is likely to be lost as Labor postures as a climate saviour against the fossil fuel addicts of the Coalition.
For the engaged, informed voter, it leaves a fairly simple choice at the next election: the major parties offer a choice between too little climate action and a reversal of existing climate action. Only independents and the crossbenchers offer a meaningful choice on climate.
