Unproven technologies a poor power option

Forty years ago, there was a small demonstration hot rock geothermal plant in the US and a concentrated solar-steam electricity plant in Italy. After 40 years of development, these two technologies are still not delivering cost-effective power on a large scale anywhere in the world.

At that time, no one seriously considered carbon capture and storage for power plants; the technology is still less than 10 years old. If we haven't managed to prove up commercial-scale electricity generation from hot rocks or solar thermal after 40 years, what makes us so confident about CCS?

Given the above brief history, is it wise contingency planning to expect that half our electricity in 2050 will be coming from unproven technologies? Past history may suggest that the proven technologies we have today may be all we can rely on.

The invisible elephant in the room of this Treasury report is the one low-emission technology that has been proven for more than 40 years and is still undergoing significant further improvement: nuclear energy. If it's good enough for most of the rest of the world, why not Australia?

Without nuclear power, we will be taking a big gamble on technology development and increasing our electricity costs unnecessarily. The Treasury modelling shows that under the 'high price' scenario described above, the average wholesale electricity price in Australia could rise to almost $200 a megawatt hour in today's dollar terms. The US Department of Energy predicts new advanced nuclear plants will be running at around half that cost by 2016.

We have an electricity plan for 2050 that unnecessarily relies on unproven technology while paying a substantial premium for the pleasure. Other countries, including China, do not. Surely we can do better than this?

First Published in The Australian 27 July 2011