Privatecapital not there for nuclear dream
There’s vested interests everywhere in theenergy sector, but it’s hard to find a deep-pocketed investor interested innuclear over renewables and gas.
May 22, 2024 – 6.38pm
Listen to this article
4 min
Just say Australia does go down the nuclearenergy path; who is sticking their hands up to help fund it?
Not the superannuation funds. Not the bigretailers, AGL Energy and Origin Energy.
Not the financial investors and offshoreutilities which own most of the country’s wind and solar farms, and we’rerelying on to keep developing.
The lack of offers to fund nuclear power hasbeen deafening. David Rowe
Not the groups with the big transition funds –the Macquaries and Brookfields of the world – which get most of their moneyfrom offshore pension funds and are more interested in renewables.
We’ve asked major players in each of thosegroups in the past fortnight, and there is zero interest. They are not eventalking about it.
They don’t see how a nuclear sector could beviable given the costs associated with building a plant and the prices neededto recover that cost (and more) in wholesale electricity markets.
It would have to come back to the government,either funding the development directly or guaranteeing the price at whichsomeone else could sell that power into the national electricity market. That’sa big liability.
