Institute Notes / Reports
Policy Overview: After 20 Years, We Have Barely Started
By Robert Pritchard, Executive Director EPIA (updated 2023)
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At the end of 2020, Australia finds itself confronted by a range of major, but as-yetunquantified, threats and opportunities flowing from internal and external demands for the world to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. The high degree of uncertainty about these threats and opportunities requires Australia to pursue an apolitical national energy plan. There is much to be considered and done.
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A national energy plan must ensure our long-term energy security, including the reliability of our power system and the possible future electricification of our transport system. At the same time, the plan must honour Australia’s ongoing commitments to all of its export customers. Technology neutrality, technological innovation and diversification must be dominant themes, as must integrity and truth.
Interview by Alan Jones with EPIA's Executive Director
EPIA's Executive Director interviewed by Alan Jones: 'Forced penetration' of renewables is 'destabilising the entire power system'.
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Executive Director of the Energy Policy Institute of Australia Robert Pritchard told Sky News that 'forced penetration of renewables is destabilising the entire power system.' Mr Pritchard says a 'systems approach' needs to be undertaken in order to run a power system, and along with renewables, coal, gas and nuclear have a part to play.
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Sky News host Alan Jones says it's illegal to operate a nuclear reactor in Australia, yet 'Russia, the United States, Japan and China are building new ones ... and they have coal like we do.' Australia has more than 40 per cent of the world's uranium reserves, but nuclear power is banned under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
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Mr Jones says, 'We should be exploiting that advantage to generate clean, reliable, nuclear power ... Every year we export more than 400 shipping containers of uranium, enough to generate all of our own electricity with zero emissions.'
The ESB’s Alarming Report on the ‘Health of the National Electricity Market’
There surely cannot be any more serious message to policymakers than what the Energy Security Board (ESB) sent in its 94-page annual Health of the Market report at the end of 2018.
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Author: Robert Pritchard, Executive Director, EPIA
Report of a Debate on the Future of Electricity Industry, January 2018
Report from the EPIA Member Briefing held in Sydney on 23 January 2018
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Chair: Robert Pritchard, Executive Director, Energy Policy Institute of Australia
Panel:
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Dr Ron Loveland, Energy Advisor to the Welsh Government
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Dr Liz Develin, Deputy Secretary, NSW Department of Planning and Environment
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Dr Jonathan Mirrlees-Black, Director, Cambridge Economic Policy Associates