Delta boss Richard Wrightson says nuclear won’t come quick enough to replace coal

Time is the biggest enemy of Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy plan, according to Delta Group boss Richard Wrightson.

Australia’s energy networks can’t wait for nuclear power to come on line to solve reliability issues, Delta energy chief executive Richard Wrightson says.

Speaking after Peter Dutton pinned his election hopes, and the Coalition’s energy strategy, on nuclear energy, Mr Wrightson said Australia needed to be building more firming options now, rather than wait for ­nuclear power stations in the mid-2030s.

Delta runs the Vales Point coal-fired power station in NSW, which is likely to remain online until 2033. But Mr Wrightson told The Australian’s Energy Nation forum in Sydney on Wednesday that the country needed to take into account the costs of maintaining existing assets – or start building more firming alternatives now – to maintain energy ­security over the next decade.

“Everyone from an environmental point of view says we should stop putting capital into coal-fired power stations, which is a principled point of view and I understand that. But that only makes sense if you’re putting that capital into replacements,” he said. “And I don’t mean wind farms and solar panels, I mean firming replacements.

“My power station used to produce energy as its primary role – and it still produces energy, but now what it gets rewarded for is its reliability. I’m not that cheap as an ­energy provider. But I am a ­reliability provider. I can’t really compete with renewables, they’ll push me out of the market if I don’t get paid for reliability. I’ll stop getting paid when we start building things that replace my reliability. But right now we’re not doing that.”

The lack of investment in gas-fired power as a replacement for coal plants meant reliable firming options might fall away as coal-fired station owners struggled with the costs of extending the life of ageing plants, he said.

“Right now my problem is putting forward a business case to ­invest,” he said. “How much do I spend on reliability? To extend (Vales Point) to 2033, it’s tens of millions of dollars. To go beyond 2033 it would be hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Australia’s coal-fired fleet is due to largely be retired by 2035 – the most optimistic date for the entry of even a small modular ­reactor under the nuclear policy announced by the Opposition Leader on Wednesday.

“The question for me around nuclear is timing. If the answer is going to be nuclear, how quickly can you build it, because I can’t keep my power station going ­indefinitely,” he said. “I’ll leave others to debate whether nuclear is the right path, but how quickly can you do it?”