The Emerging Energy Debate: Team Fossil vs. Team Renewable

It is mid-June 2024, and Australia’s Federal Liberal and National party coalition (the Opposition) has announced its Nuclear Energy Policy for Australia, and that it intends to take this to the next Federal election (probably) in March 2025.

The nuclear energy debate has now ignited, and yes, it will be used by both the Labor Government and the Coalition to create a point of (policy) difference between them.  This is a good thing, right?  We need the debate, right?

Well here we are at day three and already the debate descends into the ‘politics’ of renewables and the transition away from fossil fuelled Australian economy.  Quantitative data has left the building, and we descend into a ‘numbers furore’ in an effort to shore up positions and garner public support. 

It is my view that there will be little room for measured and informed debate over the months leading into the election.  The battle lines are being drawn, Australia’s energy base has been assigned to teams, and to some extent, debating-quality reason is predictably being shown the door.

So what are the new-world energy players and in which team are they positioned?
I attempt to answer this.

Finally, we now have the basis for a sensible debate on our renewables future.  Ok, ok, so I’m looking through my rosy-tinted glasses – I’m allowed to.  What we have now is a three-way debate – The ‘Team Fossil’ members we can call Crude, Gas, and Coal, and they deliver energy (power, fuel) and process feedstock to industry.  The other is ‘Team Renewable’, and its members include Wind, Solar, Geothermal, Hydro, Tidal, and…yes…Nuclear.  Quite a line up of members really. 

In the Team Renewable corner we’ve seen the very shy Nuclear contributor thrust into the sunlight. Reluctantly?  Probably.  The debate overdue.  Throw into the debate (or has it become a cauldron already) are some undisclosed motivations, interests and influencers, and we seem already to be getting outcomes that are in the interests of industry sectors as opposed to The State.  There, I said it.

At the beginning I said a three-way debate– how so? 

Well, does the emergence of Nuclear from the shadows now divide Team Renewables?  I think it does, and into two sub-camps.  The first sub-camp is the one with the team members that deliver variable energy (Wind, Solar).  The players in this camp are now well regarded and their CAPEX costs are coming down.  For grid stability electrical firming needs to be introduced, it can be, and it is. 

In the other sub-camp are found the team members that deliver base load energy (Hydro, Geothermal, and Nuclear).  Let’s retire Hydro from contention in this part of Western Australia, for obvious reasons.  Nuclear comes with a big price tag, a long lead in time, a bad reputational hang-over from its old past, and frankly, the politics is going to mercilessly boot it around between now and the Federl election.  This will be messy, and Nuclear may be a victim in the process, consigned to history – but maybe not, we’ll see.  It may have to be retired ‘hurt’ during the debate between Team Fossil and Team Renewable.

That leaves geothermal as a base load source of renewable energy.   Much maligned and misunderstood, Geothermal occurs naturally in some places (like team mate Hydro), and does the job.  Let’s call that Gen.1 Geothermal.  Gen 2. Geothermal drills down and sometimes horizontally for hot water extraction, sometimes using fracking, to ‘farm’ heat energy.  Not that successful because the heat energy is not sufficiently intense to justify the CAPEX.

Why isn’t Geothermal a strong contender in the debate in Australia when it is in other countries? 
Now, that’s a story for another day…and it centres on the emergence of Gen. 3 Geothermal.