Former PM 'sceptical' about nuclear, keen on hydropower

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Australia requires a fresh influx of investment in pumped hydroelectric power projects to help its shift to renewable energy, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said, as the country can't rely solely on batteries.

But the businessman also poured cold water on the nuclear power plans of his former party, saying there's a lot of doubt about how much the switch would cost.

Mr Turnbull made the comments at the International Hydropower Association's Powering Australia's Energy Future conference in Brisbane on Tuesday, where there were also calls for the government to provide more support for hydropower projects to help them get past the planning stage.

The event was held a day after a report from the Climate Change Authority supported a renewable energy pathway for Australia, and months after the recently elected LNP Queensland government cancelled the state's Pioneer Burdekin pumped hydro scheme.

Pumped hydro projects like those at Wivenhoe in Queensland and Shoalhaven in NSW can store excess renewable energy on a large scale and for a long time, and release it when needed.

Without a facility to store renewable energy for times when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining, Mr Turnbull said, Australians would struggle to rely on the cheapest, lowest emission forms of electricity.

"If we don't have big, long-term storage, intermittent renewables will face increasingly higher levels of power cuts and higher project costs," he said via video conference.

It's a major factor in keeping the cost of renewable energy low.

He said that hydropower projects would also be able to store nuclear power, as many overseas had been set up to do so.

But Mr Turnbull, who serves as the association's president, expressed concern about the economics of ditching renewable energy for nuclear power in Australia.

"Most people in the energy sector are pretty skeptical about it, not because there's any question about the fact that nuclear generation works, but the economics of it in Australia seem pretty tough," he said.

Most of the pumped hydro projects currently operating in the world were actually built to support nuclear power because nuclear power plants can't quickly increase or decrease power output, and they definitely can't be switched on and off.

His comments come just one day after a report from the Climate Change Authority found that switching to nuclear power for energy generation could set back Australia's progress towards its climate goal by 12 years and result in an additional two billion tonnes of carbon emissions by 2050.

The Coalition, previously led by Mr Turnbull, has committed to constructing seven nuclear power plants across Australia if it secures government at the next federal election.

Regardless of the election result, Queensland Hydro's chief executive, Kieran Cusack, said both federal and state governments had to give priority to investing in hydroelectric power projects.

While the private sector could bring investment and help to speed up hydropower projects, he said, only governments would take on the risks involved in setting up the facilities.

"The public sector has a really important role in driving the development of what I reckon could be described as multi-generational, large-scale, long-term storage assets," Mr Cusack said.

If you think about the development pipeline for projects like Borumba (in Queensland) and Snowy 2.0, they're as complex as can be, the risk involved is high and they've got a bloody long construction timeline.

The $12 billion Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project in New South Wales is due to be finished by the end of 2028.