US energy secretary backs nuclear, attacks 2050 net zero targets
The comments underscore the US’s commitment to fossil fuels under Donald Trump and the forthright encouragement that Washington will place on allies to follow suit.
Donald Trump’s Energy Secretary Chris Wright has declared he would “love” to see Australia embrace uranium, as he labelled the ambition to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 a “sinister” goal.
The comments underscore the US’s commitment to fossil fuels under Mr Trump, and also and the forthright encouragement that Washington will place on allies to follow suit.
Australia is already the world’s fourth-largest exporter of uranium but Mr Wright said he believed Canberra had ample opportunities to increase its foothold in the market – though it will first have to unshackle itself from ideological opposition to hydrocarbons.
“I think Australia has a tremendous future, but it has some of the same struggles we have in the United States and even worse, in Europe, which is this desire for top-down control, for deciding what’s virtuous and what isn’t,” Mr Wright told the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London.
“This wholly incorrect belief that somehow there’s a clean energy and dirty energy; there’s good things and bad things – that’s just not how the world works.”
The comments add further fuel to Australia’s national debate about nuclear power. The Coalition has said it will build seven nuclear power stations to replace retiring coal. But the first will not be ready until 2037, meaning the Coalition will have to run coal for longer – with an increased role for gas.
Critics insist the plan is not viable, highlighting that many of Australia’s coal power stations are unlikely to be able to run for more than a decade – while there are also doubts about how nuclear will financially compete with more and more renewables.
The Coalition rejects the criticism and insists nuclear power is the only viable pathway to Australia achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
But Mr Wright said the ambition to be net zero is causing economic harm
“Net-zero 2050 is a sinister goal. It’s a terrible goal. The aggressive pursuit of it – and you’re sitting in a country that has aggressively pursued this goal – has not delivered any benefits, but it’s delivered tremendous costs,” Mr Wright said via video link.
“This is not energy transition. This is lunacy. This is impoverishing your own citizens in a delusion that this is somehow going to make the world a better place.”
Mr Wright said the Trump administration understood the value of hydrocarbons and the priority was to remove impediments to increased production. Mr Trump has made bolstering fossil fuel production a key objective as he moves to lower inflation – allowing for lower interest rates and faster economic growth.
The President has already opened US federal land for fossil fuel drilling, an order that is unlikely to bolster immediate production as energy companies remain satisfied with current levels.
The Trump administration last week said it had granted a liquefied natural gas export license to the commonwealth LNG project in Louisiana, the first approval of LNG exports after Joe Biden paused them early last year.
The order threatens to increase competition for Woodside, which earmarked the previous suspension as a reason for its $US1.2bn ($1.8bn) acquisition of the LNG project Driftwood from US LNG company Tellurian.
Originally published as US energy secretary backs nuclear, attacks 2050 net zero targets
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