EDITORIAL: Energy policy is no place for ideological zealotry

Australia needs reliable, affordable sources of low-emission electricity generation to power our economy and people through the 21st century and beyond.

All three factors — reliability, affordability and sustainability — are essential.

In 2024, no serious person doubts the existential need for the world to pivot away from fossil fuels towards more environmentally-friendly sources of electricity generation.

That debate has been done. The climate wars are over, at least in the mainstream.

Yet discussion of energy policy in Australia is still beholden to ideology.

And there’s one word in this space which sets elements of the Left on edge more than any other.

Nuclear.

Mere mention of the word sends Labor members into hysterics.

Since Peter Dutton announced the Coalition’s policy to transition seven existing coal-fired power stations around the country to nuclear power plants, they’ve lined up to pour scorn.

“Fantasy”, a “scam”, “economic madness” or the “dumbest policy ever put forward by a major party” are among the invective.

The Greens are even more hyperbolic. Leader Adam Bandt invoked Chernobyl and Fukushima as he declared nuclear a “threat to people’s safety” on X.

On Friday, the Coalition released costings which they say show going nuclear would cost $260 billion less than Labor’s renewable-heavy energy road map.

Anthony Albanese said that was a “fiction”, and that Australians would be lumped with far higher electricity bills under Mr Dutton’s “nuclear nightmare”.

He and Energy Minister Chris Bowen are now framing their opposition to nuclear as chiefly economic. Mr Bowen said the assumptions underwriting the modelling contained “fatal errors” which ignored reality.

The truth is Labor’s hardline anti-nuclear stance is based on ideology and feeling, not facts.

Once upon a time, that fear of nuclear was justified. Now, technology has come a long way, but Labor’s attitudes remain rooted in the Seventies.

The Coalition too is guilty of energy fanaticism, having fostered climate scepticism throughout much of the previous two decades.

But while our politicians are energy zealots, Australians are largely agnostic about how they get their power — provided it fulfils those three essential factors.

A Resolve poll conducted in June found 62 per cent of respondents were supportive of or open to nuclear power as part of Australia’s energy mix.

That shows that the debate is there for the taking for whichever side can mount the most convincing argument.

Labor’s case hasn’t been helped by early summer blackouts in NSW, which have made people mindful of the need for “always-on” sources of electricity generation, not dependent on the weather.

Whether voters will accept the Coalition’s offering, which depends on economic modelling decades into the future — always sketchy at best — is unclear.

But whichever way Australians land, they’ll expect decisions to be made on facts, not feelings.