Nationals Leader David Littleproud said Victoria’s power crisis, which left more than half a million people blacked out after six transmission towers near Geelong toppled to the ground in wild weather, proves the need for a National Energy Summit and a broader discussion on nuclear power.
Mr Littleproud said the broken transmission towers were a stark reminder of the difficulties in transmitting power from the regions to the cities but would become an even bigger problem under Labor’s reckless race to 82 per cent renewables by 2030.
“If we don’t put all options on the table, we will be left with an extra 28,000 kilometres of new transmission lines, which, when there are storms, increases the risk of taking out more transmission lines, weakening our grid’s reliability,” Mr Littleproud said.
“That’s a lot of transmission lines to get such an enormous amount of renewable energy from the regions to the cities. What has happened overnight shows the fragility of that model.
“If small scale nuclear plants were built where retiring coal fired power stations are now, you could minimise the need for new transmission lines, reducing the risk of these incidents.
“Why wouldn’t we use some common sense, not just in the generation of energy, but reducing the amount of transmission lines that we have, so we don’t have this crisis again in Victoria?”
Mr Littleproud has called on the Prime Minister to again consider his request, first made when he became Nationals Leader, to call a National Energy Summit.
“The Nationals have called for this for more than 18 months.
“We need a sensible conversation about all the energy alternatives that are there, which includes putting nuclear back on the table. Let’s take away the nuclear energy ban and fight this out in the marketplace.
“To think we might now have up to 200,000 homes without power until Sunday isn’t good enough.
“Victorian households and Australians deserve more than the chaos they are experiencing caused by the unreliability of power lines, which Labor now wants even more of.”
