Shoot down nuclear energy: Anthony Albanese appoints Matt Kean to chair Climate Change Authority

Anthony Albanese has escalated his war against nuclear power by appointing former NSW Liberal treasurer Matt Kean to chair the Climate Change Authority.

From right: Anthony Albanese and Energy Minister Chris Bowen lead out former NSW Liberal treasurer Matt Kean at a news conference on Monday. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Anthony Albanese has escalated his campaign against nuclear power by appointing Matt Kean to chair the Climate Change Authority, with the former NSW Liberal treasurer and energy minister declaring he had rejected the technology because he didn’t want to bankrupt Australia’s most populous state.

The Prime Minister, who said he had “no plans whatsoever” to repeal John Howard’s federal moratorium on nuclear, said Mr Kean understood “the folly that walking away from the renewables transition represents for our nation”.

As the Coalition ramped up pressure on Labor to reveal the cost of its clean-energy transition, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen revealed he had hand-picked Mr Kean and made the recommendation to Mr Albanese and cabinet because he was “the best for the job”.

Coalition MPs, speaking to The Australian on background, said there was a sense of “utter shock” in the NSW Liberal division because Mr Kean had created the impression he was going to do something commercial.

“They see it as a betrayal of the party,” one said. “He’s still a serving MP. It’s another barrier to us winning the teal seats.”

Nationals leader David Littleproud, who said on Monday the Coalition knew what its nuclear plan would cost and would be announcing it “very soon”, lashed out at Mr Kean’s appointment.

“The government has only diminished the standing of the authority to have appointed someone who is narrowly ideologically driven as a political stunt,” Mr Littleproud said.

Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce also accused Mr Kean of being consistently “treacherous” and said he should have joined the Labor Party at the start of his political career.

Reaction from former members of the Climate Change Authority, which will advise the Albanese government on its 2035 emissions reduction target and has already flagged a range of 65-75 per cent, was mixed. Energy economist Danny Price, who was a member between 2015 and 2017, said: “My only comment is that his appointment is emblematic of the worsening cancer of the politicisation of our public service.”

Former chief scientist Alan Finkel backed Mr Kean’s appointment, saying that he always had a strong commitment to the environment and would “make an excellent chair”.

Another former member of the agency, Kate Carnell, said Mr Kean would be “really good” and “give the work of the authority a bit of a spotlight”.

Mr Kean said that as state energy minister he considered how to replace the capacity of four retiring coal-fired power stations by 2030 and ruled out nuclear “based on economics and engineering”.

“The advice that I received at the time which was most ­compelling was from the Chief Scientist of NSW, Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte ...” he said. “His advice to me was that in order to bring nuclear into the system, it would take far too long and would be far too expensive for NSW. I didn’t want to bankrupt the state and I didn’t want to put those huge costs onto families.

“That’s why we introduced the Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap, which planned the transition to renewables, backed up by firming and storage, because we know that was the cheapest option for NSW. It could be rolled out the quickest and deliver the future that we wanted.”

In a Sky News interview in 2021, Mr Kean said he believed nuclear would “have a role to play” in Australia and there would be nuclear power stations located here. He said at the time that he couldn’t bet on technology that wasn’t readily available.

Mr Albanese avoided the question of whether he would respect a Coalition mandate and help repeal the ban on nuclear if Peter Dutton won the election, insisting Labor had a “real plan” and the Opposition Leader had a plan for “denial and delay”.

“One of the great distinctions now – and I didn’t think when I first came to this place I’d say this – but this side of the House, the Labor Party, believe in working with the business community, believe in private sector investment. That side of the House have adopted Soviet tactics. They want a command economy,” the Prime Minister said in question time.

“It’s got to be all funded, the loss will all be there, the taxpayer subsidies will all be there with centralised planning, which is why they hide the cost, because it simply doesn’t stack up. There isn’t a single investor, a single bank, a single financial institution, not even their mates are queuing up to say ‘I’ve got some money for nuclear reactors’.

“And that’s because it doesn’t stack up, which is why they are hiding the costs.”

Mr Albanese didn’t put a cost on his energy plan as the Coalition repeatedly references a Net Zero Australia study that found Australia would need to deploy up to $1.5 trillion by the end of the decade to meet its net zero emissions by 2050 target.

Jim Chalmers and Health Minister Mark Butler have pointed to the Australian Energy Market Operator’s 2024 Integrated System Plan, which estimated $121bn of capital investment would be required to reach net zero by 2050.

That amount excluded consumer energy resources, such as rooftop solar, distribution network upgrades and an explicit cost of carbon.

“Look at the AEMO report which talks about $121bn from now until 2050, which is less than a tenth of the figures that Peter Dutton is bandying about,” the Treasurer told Nine’s Today.

“We know what AEMO says, the energy market operator says, about our investment needs. We know the kinds of investment we’ll need from the private sector to make the most of this global net zero energy transformation.”

Superpower Institute chair Rod Sims said gas was a much better option to back-up renewables when compared to nuclear, warning that nuclear could increase household energy costs by well over $200 per annum.

The former chair of the consumer watchdog questioned what the energy mix would be in the Coalition energy policy, declaring that “if you are going to have renewables, the right back-up is gas.”

“Nuclear runs all the time … that makes it incompatible with renewables,” Professor Sims said. “We need open cycle gas plants designed to run up to 15 per cent of the time.”

He also warned that the construction of new nuclear power plants in the US and UK all had “massive cost overruns”, which averaged 300 per cent.

On Monday, Mr Kean had not yet formally resigned his position as the state Liberal MP for Hornsby despite being announced as the incoming chair of the Climate Change Authority. The former energy minister announced his departure last week and delivered his valedictory speech in the chamber on Friday – but he remains a Liberal state MP. The Australian confirmed that NSW Speaker Greg Piper had not received any resignation letter from Mr Kean by Monday afternoon.

A NSW source criticised Mr Kean’s appointment, saying: “When did Matt get any media for anything other than attacking the Liberal Party?”

Additional reporting: Alexi Demetriadi