The country needs a plan for delivering alternative energy, not just a carbon price, former Telstra boss and nuclear power advocate Ziggy Switkowski has warned, adding that the wait for the government’s energy blueprint is a “disgrace”.
He said the carbon tax would raise billions of dollars, much of which needed to be invested in alternative technologies, but there was no plan yet for what technologies to invest in.
The Rudd government in 2008 started work on a white paper on energy policy, but its finalisation was delayed last year amid uncertainty over the government’s proposed emissions trading scheme that was blocked in parliament. It will now finalise the white paper next year.
“The first thing we need to do is get a mandate for widespread reductions in greenhouse gases and fossil fuel usage, and then point to how that is going to happen in terms of the sort of technologies that are going to become available over the next several decades,” Dr Switkowski told The Australian.
“Then we can use an emissions trading scheme and a price on carbon to drive behaviour in that direction.
“At this stage, the government is putting in place an emissions trading scheme, but without being clear what people are meant to do if we start discouraging the use of petrol.”
Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson said the government was consulting with industry and other stakeholders on an alternative fuels strategy as part of the white paper. In the second half of this year, it plans to release an assessment of Australia’s liquid fuel security that will also feed into the white paper.
He reiterated that nuclear power was off the agenda.
“The government’s policy is that nuclear power isn’t needed as part of Australia’s energy mix, given our country’s abundance and diversity of low-cost and reliable energy sources, both fossil fuel and renewable,” Mr Ferguson said in a statement.
Dr Switkowski said the government was right to start with a “politically acceptable” carbon price, but he warned that to drive the take-up of alternative energy the price would have to rise substantially from the $20-$30 a tonne being speculated to more than $50 a tonne.
“In 10 years’ time there might be quite a severe impost on the cost of fossil fuels, but hopefully at that point we will have acceptable alternatives to coal and gas,” he said.
Dr Switkowski served as chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation from 2007 until last year. ANSTO runs Australia’s only nuclear reactor, for research, at Lucas Heights in Sydney’s south.
In 2006, he was appointed to chair an inquiry for the Howard government into the viability of a domestic nuclear power industry.
The inquiry concluded that Australia was well positioned to increase its production and export of uranium as well as adding nuclear power to its own energy mix.
