In a crazy week, Murray Hogarth is attending five energy or climate events over four days. In Sydney, there’s been the puzzling Navigating Nuclear on Monday, the more mainstream Industrial Decarbonisation Summit on Tuesday, followed by the Energy Efficiency Council’s two-day annual national conference on Wednesday and Thursday. And that’s on top of two Climate Action Week forums on Thursday.
This is a tale of my first two events in a hectic week. It opens a window into the emerging great contest of Australian energy and climate politics: the clean energy transition versus a nuclear power grab.
Both events were held this week on the grounds of the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Both related to energy.
That’s where the similarities end.
The differences between the two events, go to the atomic split that is developing in the Australian political scene. It’s focused on energy and climate policy, with a national election due within a year, and quite likely to be held in May 2025.
The current Australian government, led by Labor Party Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, is backing a renewable energy and electrification-led future. It features a target of 82 per cent renewable generation by 2030, mainly wind and solar, backed by battery storage and pumped hydro. There’s also ongoing use of fossil fuel gas, but with an accelerated exit of coal generation, to be all gone by 2035 at the latest.
The federal Liberal-National coalition, under opposition leader Peter Dutton, wants to introduce nuclear power into the mix. This implies slowing or stopping the large-scale renewables rollout, and prolonging coal generation, to allow a window of at least a decade and experts warn more likely two decades two to plan, design, approve, regulate and develop nuclear power stations, which are currently banned in Australia.
This makes the next election a critical decision point for the nation. The two very different events I’ve attended thus far this week may help Australian voters to better understand the choices they face.
Monday – the nuclear event
My first event this week was on the nuclear side. On Monday (13 May) I attended Navigating Nuclear, an all-day workshop hosted by the Australian Nuclear Association (ANA) and Women in Nuclear Australia (WiN Australia), for which the organisers said ”everyone was welcome”: government ministers, politicians, mayors, environmental groups, technical experts and laypersons; voters of all persuasions.
The “about” blurb for the event told me:
Nuclear energy is frequently debated with a deep passion. This workshop provides participants with an opportunity to learn everything they need to know about nuclear energy and what it means for Australia’s future, so that they can engage with and lead more informed discussions and decisions in their business, families and communities. Technical specialists and leaders from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and international and Australian institutions, will facilitate in-person lectures and discussions on a broad range of issues, and answer the toughest questions. Energy and national security, SMRs, employment, rural and aboriginal communities, environmental and visual impacts, critical minerals, waste, proliferation, safety, costs and benefits, and time to global net zero, will all be addressed. To promote open and frank discussion, Chatham House rules apply.
That last bit was strange. Chatham House rules, put simply, mean that participants attending an event can talk about what they heard. But, by agreeing to this convention, they undertake not to say who said what, nor name their organisations.
It was not much use to attend as the media if you couldn’t say who said what, especially when it had the feel of a propaganda event, in spite of some genuinely highly-qualified international speakers. But I was curious enough to pay $570 from my own pocket to register and attend anyway. Which also meant I agreed to the Chatham House rules, although doing so has no bearing on anything that’s already on the public record, nor anything before or after the event.
That said, I ended up feeling totally misled. In social media posts to promote the event, key organisers said things such as, “No politics – lots of nuclear facts and discussion”; and, “these workshops are NOT aligned with politics and WILL present the facts around nuclear with a team of nuclear specialists from around the world”; and also, “This is a great opportunity for professionals to get the facts without the politics and will be an exciting day for all.”
Can you imagine my surprise when I turned up and there was the Liberal Party Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Ted O’Brien, the opposition’s key nuclear proponent, speaking at the start of the event?
As far as I am concerned, Chatham House rules don’t extend to political grandstanding, especially when there were assurances that the workshop was politics-free, so I have no hesitation in reporting that O’Brien told the attendees: “I believe we are at a fork in the road, I truly do.”
Which frankly seemed optimistic. Given that at its peak the event only attracted about 50 people, including speakers, and only 10 of them women. I counted only 30 when O’Brien spoke. Quite a “fail” for what was originally planned as a five-city tour in prestigious venues, doing Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth over five days, May 13-17, but then contracted to a single day. Perhaps discerning Australians just aren’t that interested in nuclear after all?
The decarbonisation event
The next event was a total contrast, with more like 300 attendees.
On Tuesday (14 May) I attended the Energy Efficiency Council’s all-day Industrial Decarbonisation Summit, supported by the NSW government, the Australian government and the RACE for 2030 Cooperative Research Centre. Even with all of that government-level sponsorship, there were no politicians in the house, although there were several public servants who joined the uniformly impressive speaker panels.
The significance is that the clean energy transition is real policy that is being implemented now. Governments are wrestling with the challenges and opportunities, engaging with many stakeholders, developing industry plans, and money is being allocated in budgets, most recently last night’s federal budget. It’s real, not a dream.
I received a complimentary ticket to this event, as media, representing The Fifth Estate, and there were no restrictions on reporting whatsoever.
The line-up included the legendary energy and industrial efficiency guru Amory Lovins, co-founder and Emeritus Professor of RMI, originally the Rocky Mountains Institute, as the keynote international guest speaker. Lovins was joined by many of the best and brightest of Australia’s energy and climate experts, from across government, industry bodies, academia, research and policy institutions, and more.
Ironically, while I’m free to quote anyone and everyone, my problem here is that I almost don’t know where to start. Throughout the day the room was filled with a sense of quiet determination to deliver the energy transition and decarbonise the nation, with a focus on core industries like manufacturing and food processing. All the time recognising the massive challenges involved, but also the opportunities, and strategising to address both.
I did put a question to the last panel of the day, which included Lovins with several Australian experts. I relayed how the Navigating Nuclear event the day before had been dominated by people who simply did not believe that a renewables-led energy transition was possible, or desirable, and who proposed that going nuclear was mission critical to achieving decarbonisation on time (that is net zero by 2050).
So I asked: ”Does the panel believe we can achieve a clean energy transition? Can we do this?” Suffice it to say, the answer was “yes”, and with no nuclear power in the picture.
Murray Hogarth is a regular columnist and correspondent for The Fifth Estate. He is an independent guide to business and other organisations, specialising in positioning strategy, stakeholder engagement, thought-leadership and storytelling for sustainability and the energy transition.