Coalition Leaders' Net Zero Claims Debunked by Experts and Data

It was all incredibly matey as Angus Taylor and Matt Canavan strode into cattle saleyards near Rockhampton to meet Karl Stefanovic for a “great net zero debate”.

Perhaps a month was long enough for the pair to have forgotten Stefanovic’s left arm being draped around British far-right figure Tommy Robinson and the fawning interview he had given to the anti-Islam activist (an interview that ultimately saw him part company with longtime employer, Nine).

But there they were, the Coalition’s two leaders, on another episode of the former morning television darling’s eponymous podcast and YouTube show.

“Good on you, Karl,” said Canavan, in front of the assembled crowd. “Wonderful to be here with you,” said Taylor.

Then the “debate” began. Strictly speaking, a debate is where you have opposing views that can thrash out an issue in front of an audience to inform public discourse.

But this was not that.

Instead it was an entirely one-sided platform for the Coalition to demonstrate their contempt for large renewable energy projects and to repeat tropes about “net zero” and electricity costs.

Two Tasmanias?

The Nationals leader told the audience that 12m hectares of land would be needed for “solar, wind and transmission lines”.

“That’s two Tasmanias’ worth of this stuff across our nation,” Canavan said.

Canavan said this figure had come from the “very smart people” at Net Zero Australia – a research partnership of the University of Melbourne, the University of Queensland, and Princeton University.

So what did NZAu actually find?

In its most recent reporting, NZAu said 2m ha – not 12m – would be needed for renewable energy and transmission infrastructure (slide 36 in this pdf if you want to follow along at home) to help Australia reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

But that 2m figure represents the total area of projects, not the smaller area of land actually used for access roads, easements and the solar panels, turbines and transmission towers themselves.

This “direct footprint” would be about 500,000ha – 24 times less than Canavan’s “two Tasmanias’”.

So where did the 12m figure come from?

That number was in an earlier NZAu report. It represented the “total project area” estimated for Australia to completely decarbonise its energy system – and also replace all current exports of coal and gas with the equivalent amount, in energy terms, of clean alternatives.

That report did not give a “direct footprint” figure, but said, for example, that wind turbines and access roads generally took up 1% of the total windfarm area.

Not mentioned by Canavan was that the same report from which he plucked his “two Tasmanias” also estimated a “new forest area of 5.1 million hectares” would be planted to help sequester CO2.

The director of NZAu, Prof Michael Brear, said the project had not yet “looked in detail as to how Australia might locate energy infrastructure such that it compromises all forms of land use less, including farming”.

“Our latest report has studied related trade-offs between locating energy infrastructure and biodiversity and suggests there may be significant opportunity for managing such risks.

“Evidently, estimating the land used by future energy infrastructure is a complex and important topic that deserves careful investigation and careful discussion.”

Prof Andrew Blakers, of the Australian National University, has done his own calculation of the land lost to renewable energy in a zero emissions electricity grid – 120,000ha, or 1,200 sq kilometres.

He said Canavan’s claim was “plain wrong and plain silly.”

“It’s surprising a senator would throw around wild numbers without doing a simple reality check,” he said.

Reliability and cost

None of this is to discount concerns over the environmental risk from badly placed projects, or genuinely held concerns in many communities faced with renewables projects who are being asked to differentiate real issues from political fear-mongering.

Take the repeated evidence-free claim that renewable energy is to blame for rising electricity prices – a constant assertion from the Coalition.

Taylor appeared to be road-testing a new phrase during the show saying renewable energy and net zero was “driving up electricity prices, driving down reliability.”

But as experts have said repeatedly, this is not true. Australia’s electricity prices have been pushed up largely because of rising gas and coal prices, linked in large part to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

But last week the Australian Energy Market Operator reported the price of wholesale electricity – which makes up about a third of the bill from retailers – in the National Electricity Market had fallen by 47% from a year ago. Why?

Aemo said in a report that “increased renewable generation” and “higher grid-scale battery discharge during peak periods” had helped lower market prices.

Separately, CSIRO analysis has suggested that even if net zero policies were abandoned, the price of electricity in the future is likely to be higher than it is today.

And what about reliability?

In a recent report, Aemo said that “reliability risks in the next five years are primarily triggered by the retirement of large power stations.”

The director of the energy and climate program at Grattan Institute, Alison Reeve, said there was “no evidence” renewables were making the grid less reliable.

The reliability standard in place across the National Electricity Market had been breached only twice, she said, both in 2008.

“Power outages overwhelmingly are due to network outages when poles and wires are out – a rat gets in a substation or someone drives into a pole. Between 2009 and 2019 only 0.3% of outages were due to a lack of electricity to meet demand.”

Plant food?

Joining Taylor and Canavan on the panel was the Liberal National MP for Flynn, Colin Boyce.

Boyce has previously signed a declaration that dismisses carbon dioxide as “plant food” and that more of it in the atmosphere “is favourable for nature, greening our planet”.

Climate change did not rate a mention in the hour-long show, which is a shame, if only because this could have been a chance to ask Boyce if he still thinks that blackouts should be allowed to occur in cities to turn the public away from renewable energy.