CSIRO CEO Dr Doug Hilton is urging politicians not to undermine scientists in the energy debate, after finding himself in the political firing line.
Earlier this year, the national science agency released its annual GenCost report, which found powering Australia with nuclear energy would cost about twice as much as renewables.
It sparked Peter Dutton, who will be campaigning on nuclear energy in the next federal election, to call the report “discredited”.
“It’s not relied on. It’s not a genuine piece of work,” Mr Dutton said.
Dr Hilton released a statement at the time defending the report, before Mr Dutton doubled down on his comments.
“My point is that we need to compare apples with apples. At the moment, that report that was released, it doesn’t take into consideration all of the costs around renewables,” he said.
‘We have no skin in the game’
Speaking to the Insiders: On Background podcast, Dr Hilton said Mr Dutton’s comments were not “helpful”.
“I think it corrodes public trust in science and at this point in time, we need public trust in all the different pillars of civil society,” Dr Hilton said.
Part of Mr Dutton’s complaints were around what the report considered.
“It doesn’t take into account some of the transmission costs, the costs around subsidies for the renewables,” he said.
But Dr Hilton rejects that, saying CSIRO uses the same assumptions across each of the energy types that it is modelling.
“We play a dead-straight bat, we have no skin in the game here in terms of which technologies are going to be used,” he said.
“What is absolutely the remit of our policymakers.”
Dr Hilton said he has since had a “respectful and useful” conversation with Shadow Energy Minister Ted O’Brien.
“He did not convince me that the report was flawed but we had a conversation about those two really important issues,” he said.
“The difference between an economic lifespan and technical life span and the per cent of time a plant like a large nuclear plant might be utilised.”
‘A level playing field’
The GenCost report is produced annually by the Australian Energy Market Operator, and projects the cost of electricity generation and storage for different technologies up to 2050, including integration costs.
It found large nuclear was up to two and a half times more expensive than firmed renewables, and small modular reactors were around six times the cost.
One of the concerns about the report is it modelled the lifespan of a nuclear plant at 30 years, but the Coalition argues they can last up to 100 years.
Dr Hilton defended the modelling, saying the same assumptions were made across all the energy types that were being modelled.
“It is a level playing field that allows us to be able to compare the cost in a meaningful way.”
Dr Hilton said the CSIRO was willing to provide the system to allow other people to do their own modelling, based on their own time frames.
The full podcast with David Speers is available here.