The federal Coalition has declared at the Cop28 climate summit that it will back a global pledge to triple nuclear energy if the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, becomes prime minister, but will not support Australia tripling its renewable energy.
Speaking on the sidelines of the conference in Dubai, the opposition’s climate change and energy spokesperson, Ted O’Brien, also said a Coalition government would consider supporting Generation III+ large-scale nuclear reactors, and not just the unproven small modular reactors it has strongly touted.
The statement at the global summit confirmed the Coalition was on a markedly different path to Labor. The Albanese government last week joined more than 120 countries in backing a pledge to triple renewable energy and double the rate of energy efficiency by 2030, but did not sign up with 22 countries that supported tripling nuclear power by 2050.
While only 11% of countries at the talks – mostly nations that already have a domestic nuclear energy industry – backed the nuclear pledge, O’Brien declared “Cop28 will be known as the nuclear Cop”
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O’Brien’s speech was at a side event hosted by the World Nuclear Association and the Australian group Coalition for Conservation, which flew seven Liberal and National MPs to the summit.
New South Wales Coalition MP Matt Kean, a former state treasurer, acknowledged O’Brien’s commitment to reaching net zero emissions but said “obviously nuclear is a long way away” and the country should back renewable energy now.
The convener of the political fundraising body Climate 200, Simon Holmes à Court, said he was not opposed to a global nuclear expansion, but argued O’Brien’s proposal for Australia had “only one conclusion, and that is blackouts”.
The Australian domestic debate over nuclear energy came as the negotiations over a deal to accelerate global action to tackle the climate crisis entered their final days.
The Cop president, Sultan Al Jaber, called on countries to be open to “flexibility, compromise, cooperation and a true understanding of the urgency of the task”.
In a signal of compromise language that Australia could support, Bowen pointed to a statement at last month’s Pacific Islands Forum that the world should “transition away from coal, oil and gas in our energy systems, in line with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change pathways for 1.5C, with a peak in fossil fuel consumption in the near term”.
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