Matt Kean lambasts ‘wild fantasy’ of former Coalition colleagues to extend coal power and build nuclear plants

Climate Change Authority chair says Peter Dutton’s energy policy would drive up electricity bills and deter investment in renewables

Extending the life of ageing coal-fired power stations before nuclear plants can be built is a “wild fantasy” that would deter near-term investment in renewables and push up power bills, according to Matt Kean, the Climate Change Authority chair.

The federal Coalition’s nuclear strategy was “an illiberal drive to intervene in the market-led energy transition [that had] been elevated from internet chatrooms and lobby groups to the national stage”, said Kean, a former energy minister in a Coalition government in New South Wales.

“The ‘delay-mongers’ have latched on to nuclear power despite the overwhelming evidence that it can only drive up energy bills, can only be more expensive, and can only take too long to build,” he told an AFR energy conference in Sydney on Tuesday.

“I suspect that even those arguing for nuclear don’t believe we’ll ever build one of these reactors in Australia … and certainly not in time to help manage the exit of coal from the system.”

The Albanese government appointed Kean, who has long advocated for more urgent climate action including by his then federal Liberal colleagues, to head the independent authority in June.

The role includes advising on what Australia’s 2035 emissions reductions targets – which will be submitted to the UN – should be. Kean declined to give a date for when the authority’s work will be ready, stoking expectations that it will hold off until after the federal election.

In response, Ted O’Brien, the federal opposition’s energy spokesperson said “[i]f Mr Kean wants to play the man, that’s for him as my interest is in good policy to deliver cheap, clean and consistent 24/7 energy”.

“Australians are struggling as they pay among the highest electricity prices in the world, and I want to assure them that the Coalition remains focused on policies to get prices down rather than being drawn into personal slanging matches,” O’Brien said.

He said the opposition had provided many details about its plans to build seven nuclear power stations from 2035. The party would detail costs by the end of this year, he said.

His speech focused on the timing of the coal plants’ closure. O’Brien contrasted the difference between when plant owners say they will shut them down with the so-called step change forecasts made by the Australian Energy Market Operator.

“I deliberately use the words forcibly removed, because this is the amount of coal Labor claims it will force out of the market well before and in defiance of the exit schedule of the very people who own the coal plants,” O’Brien said.

The Albanese government “needs to come clean and tell the Australian people which one of these plants, how many of them, they plan to rip out of the system, prematurely”, he said.

O’Brien also reiterated his pledge that the first of the nuclear plants – so-called small modular reactors – would be operating by 2035. No such reactors are in commercial use.

Kean in his speech said: “Perhaps the biggest cost of nuclear is time. It is precious time that neither our economy or our environment can afford.”

Those pushing the technology were really trying to “squeeze out profits” from their existing energy assets, he said. Relying on coal would make the grid less reliable, not more so.

“We can’t pander to those vested interests and self-serving groups who want to delay clean and cheap energy seemingly to benefit their own careers or their profits at the expense of the environment, economy and people,” Kean said.

He added that he was worried about the prospects of victory by Donald Trump in the US presidential election in November.

“As someone that cares about taking action on climate change and protecting our catastrophic global warming, I’m hugely concerned about Trump,” Kean said.

“There’s every indication” Trump would tear up the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which had poured billions of dollars into clean energy industries, he said.

While Australia might benefit a flight of capital out of the US should Trump win, the gains would only be short term, Kean said. “It’s certainly not in our interest if the US slows down.”

Cover photo: By The Guardian