The highly politicised push for nuclear energy in Australia is a distraction tactic, say renewables industry leaders such as the Smart Energy Council’s John Grimes. It masks the real agenda for the powerful fossil fuels sector, coal and gas, to hang on to market share and even grow it. Here’s the organisation where Big Gas meets pro-nuclear advocacy in the energy and climate policy sphere.
Governor Macquarie Tower, at 1 Farrer Place, in the Sydney CBD’s “big end of town” financial sector, is a tower of power where corporate and government influence meet in the lifts and share magnificent views of an iconic harbour.
On Level 23 two organisations share a bit more – an office. One is an unabashedly pro-nuclear lobbying outfit, SMR Nuclear Technology (SMR-NT), while the other presents itself as an independent energy policy organisation, the Energy Policy Institute of Australia (EPIA), self-billed as “Australia’s only apolitical, not-for-profit, energy policy body”.
Sydney-based EPIA’s website blurb declares that: “It acknowledges all environmental concerns as well as the paramount interest of the public in having access to reliable, affordable and clean energy.”
But a picture speaks a thousand words. The imagery on EPIA’s website shows a mashup of an offshore oil/gas style drilling platform and big electricity transmission infrastructure, with no sign of wind turbines, solar panels or batteries.
Over several years, the EPIA has also manifested a deepening preoccupation with bringing nuclear energy to Australia, starting with lifting the nation ban imposed in 1998.
Its 2022 paper attacking the CSIRO GenCost report, which is produced annually with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), is a core part of efforts to undermine the credibility of Australia’s renewable energy transformation and to promote nuclear energy alternatives.
The CSIRO was concerned enough about the EPIA’s intervention to produce its own rebuttal report.
Not that the EPIA is very forthcoming about the fact that its long-standing executive director, prominent lawyer and energy and resources legal adviser Robert Pritchard, who maintains his personal office at Level 23 in Governor Macquarie Tower, is a prominent figure in Australia’s unofficial “nuclear club”.
Pritchard is also a proud co-founder and board chairman with SMR-NT, which, among other activities, is a sponsor of the Australian Nuclear Association (ANA) annual conference, the pro-nuclear lobby’s “big day”, with the next event coming up in October. Among the listed speakers is Tony Irwin, Pritchard’s SMR-NT colleague and a leading public voice in the pro-nuclear campaign now sweeping Australia.
While the EPIA likes to model itself on an international counterpart, the US Energy Association (USEA), founded in 1924, there’s a key difference. While the USEA declares upfront that it’s “non-lobbying”, the EPIA is silent on this, and with his SMR-NT hat on, Pritchard is that lobbying outfit’s adviser on government relations, among other things.
In fact, the EPIA was listed as a co-sponsor of a two-day pro-nuclear propaganda workshop held in Parliament House in Canberra, alongside powerful mining lobby group the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA), which shared take-home information packs with participants and the National Party-linked conservative think tank, the Page Research Centre, which says it advocates for rural and regional Australia.
The MCA, which represents the coal industry among other miners, is aggressively pro-nuclear, advocating especially for more uranium mining and more surreptitiously anti-renewables, so it’s no surprise to see the EPIA and MCA as collaborators.
Speaker talking points from the Canberra workshop in November 2022, orchestrated by the nominally bipartisan but coalition-dominated Parliamentary Friends of Nuclear Industries, featured in Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s landmark nuclear policy launch speech in Sydney on 7 July 2023.
Details of the EPIA’s membership list aren’t shared publicly, but eligibility is “organisational” rather than “individual”, which means corporate backers are welcome. So arguably, the best guide to who is behind the lobby group is its board of directors, on the basis that influence commonly follows funding, the old “who pays the piper calls the tune” thing.
Along with Pritchard, as executive director and principal mouthpiece for the EPIA, its board is where Big Gas meets pro-nuclear. According to the EPIA’s website, the all-male board is made up of:
Daniel McClelland – executive director, corporate services & company secretary, Alinta Energy. Alinta Energy is one of Australia’s largest energy retailers, generators, investors, and developers. In the last decade, it has grown from being the largest residential gas retailer in Western Australia to the preferred electricity and gas provider for more than 1.1 million homes and businesses Australia-wide.
Tim O’Grady – general manager, public policy and government engagement, Origin Energy. Best-known to Australians as one of the nation’s largest energy retailers, with around 4 million customer accounts for electricity and gas, Origin is also a major LNG operator through Australia Pacific LNG’s major export terminal and coal seam gas production fields in Queensland.
Bill Townsend – general manager, external affairs and joint venture, INPEX Australia. Now the largest energy exploration and production company in Japan, INPEX aims to become a global top 10 producer in the next 20 years. Its most significant world-class operation is Ichthys LNG in northern Australia, which it describes as a modern engineering accomplishment and “one of the most technically challenging resource operations on the planet”.
And last but not least…
Trevor St Baker – director, St Baker Energy Innovation Fund. If you read down St Baker’s EPIA biography, you also can learn that this highly influential former coal baron and energy sector investor is the founding director of SMR Nuclear Technology Pty Ltd, or SMR-NT, a very active nuclear lobbying group.
As established earlier, SMR-NT, chaired by Robert Pritchard, shares an office location with the EPIA.
Just to be clear about the proximity between Pritchard and St Baker, Pritchard also is the long-standing chairman of the board for the St Baker Energy Innovation Fund, founded by Queensland-based St Baker, which recently rebranded itself as StB Capital Partners, an energy transition venture capital firm.
St Baker, a politically influential public champion of nuclear energy, is also listed as one of two wealthy patrons of the Coalition for Conservation (C4C), a pro-nuclear lobbying group that features in other articles in The Fifth Estate’s Nuclear Files series. C4C specialises in funding international travel for Liberal and National politicians and their close advisers, with an increasingly obvious emphasis on nuclear lobbying over the past two years.
Recently retired NSW State Liberal powerbroker and pro-renewables figure Matt Kean, who is now the new chair of the Climate Change Authority (CCA), blamed a growing concentration on nuclear advocacy when he quit his membership and any roles with the C4C in April this year (see his letter of resignation, published on social media by Kean, here).
Kean’s introductory comments, prefacing his resignation letter, addressed to C4C’s chairman Larry Anthony, a former senior federal National Party MP turned professional lobbyist, said: “I have had concerns about the direction of @CforConserv for some time, but in recent months it’s become very clear the group’s values are not conservative and it has little interest in conservation.”
The very prominent common factor between the C4C and the EPIA, aside from their shared focus on nuclear energy for Australia, is Trevor St Baker.
Pritchard, meanwhile, is also a prolific energy policy thought leader. He is the author of a number of public policy position papers produced by the EPIA over the years, including “Our Power System Imbalance” in July 2022.
The standard preface to EPIA policy papers makes it clear that its primary commitment is to investment and international competitiveness for industry, with a qualified focus on a low-carbon society as well from “Australia’s only independent and apolitical energy policy body”.
The preface includes:
EPIA focuses on high-level policy, governance and regulatory issues affecting the national interest, the economy as a whole, the environment and the community. The institute advocates that Australia must maintain a secure investment climate and be internationally competitive, whilst moving towards and contributing as much as it can to global efforts to build a low-carbon society.
That’s a long way short of a commitment to net zero as soon as possible, leaves the door open for fossil fuels including gas, and smacks of weasel words.
Pritchard is a regular opinion writer in The Australian, the flagship of the typically pro-nuclear, pro-fossil fuels, anti-renewables Murdoch media in Australia. He’s had at least six opinion pieces published in The Australian in the past 12 months all either overtly pushing the nuclear case, or questioning renewables, or both, with headlines like:
- Nuclear ban holding Australia back (19 August 2024)
- The energy option that links Starmer, Dutton (26 June 2024)
- Nation must consider small modular reactors (17 April 2024)
- Nuclear Power part of the Greenhouse Solution (7 February 2024)
- COP28 no time for renewables smugness (29 November 2023)
- Wars and Politicians in way of Energy Exports (25 October 2023)
The EPIA helpfully brings these articles out from behind the Murdoch paywall here.
Each article carried the acknowledgement that Pritchard is the EPIA’s executive director, but none of them mentioned his more direct ties to the nuclear lobby (although in one of the six opinion pieces, Pritchard’s chairman role with the St Baker Innovation Fund was referenced, as well as the EPIA one, but there was still no mention of SMR-NT).
As for the EPIA being scrupulous about its “apolitical” boast, readers can judge that for themselves. Pritchard’s most recent opinion piece for the EPIA, published by The Australian on 19 August, included the following:
Last month, however, Australian Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen told the National Press Club that, so long as he had anything to do with it, Australia would have nothing to do with nuclear power.
Bowen’s position cannot sit well with Australia’s AUKUS defence treaty partners, the UK and the US.
Peter Dutton’s Liberal/ National Party coalition seems keen to use nuclear power to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
And further down:
Dutton seems to think that 2024 may be a good year for Australia to reactivate the case for a technology-neutral energy policy. He may be right.
The Fifth Estate provided written questions to Pritchard, which he responded to in an email marked “strictly confidential”, and offered an on-the-record interview, which he declined. The questions also were shared with the gas industry directors on the EPIA board.