Rewiring Australia weighs in on nuclear proposal

Electrification advocacy group Rewiring Australia has urged Australia to “double down on electrification”, referring to the finding of AEMO’s Integrated System Plan (ISP) that the country can reliably run on renewable energy, but needs more of it.

“The ISP makes clear that the best course of climate action is to double down on progress made already, support the 3.8 million households with rooftop solar and not U-turn towards slow and expensive nuclear baseload power,” said Dan Cass, Rewiring Australia’s Executive Director.

“Consumer-owned rooftop solar, electric vehicles and batteries from households and businesses have the largest potential for generation, storage and firming capacity by 2050 — more potential than nuclear,” he added.

Cass described rooftop solar as the world’s cheapest delivered energy, with nuclear unable to compete. He said the next step was for governments and industry to coordinate better to deliver large-scale renewables.

“This includes communicating the benefits of clean energy to communities, negotiating with them in good faith and sharing the benefits of clean energy infrastructure more fairly with locals,” he said.

“We also need to focus more on consumers in cities and towns by super-sizing solar and storage on these distribution networks.

“Electrification is the fastest, cheapest and fairest way to decarbonise. We must seize this opportunity to ensure more Australians enjoy the benefits of household electrification as soon as possible,” Cass concluded.

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