The Business

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Energy alternatives

Updated October 10, 2012 00:54:50

Ticky is joined by Professor Chris Llewellyn Smith, Oxford University's Director of Energy and former head of CERN.

Source: The Business | Duration: 6min 18sec

Topics: economic-trends, business-economics-and-finance, emissions-trading, oil-and-gas, uranium-mining, electricity-energy-and-utilities, energy, australia


TICKY FULLERTON, PRESENTER: All Energy Australia International, the conference for the Asia Pacific, kicked off tomorrow in Melbourne and its keynote speaker is already stirring the possum.

Dubbed the ambassador for fusion, Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith is Oxford University's Head of Energy Research and a former head of CERN, and he's calling on Australia to impose a carbon levy on imports from countries without a carbon tax.

And he joins me now from Melbourne. Sir Chris, welcome to the program.


TICKY FULLERTON: Have you tried your idea of carbon duty on imports from countries that don't have a carbon regime on our Government yet?

CHRIS LLEWELLYN SMITH: No, I haven't. It's not my idea, by the way.


CHRIS LLEWELLYN SMITH: The idea's been around for a long time, but I think the new development is a new way of looking at it. But we shouldn't see it as a levy, rather it's a correction for unfair subsidy from countries that don't have a carbon tax. And it would even out the playing field between Australian companies that export and other companies that import.

TICKY FULLERTON: Certainly would even it out; it's just I think Australia thinks of itself as very much a leader in this space anyway, and to add another sort of trade hurdle might be a bridge too far for our current Government?

CHRIS LLEWELLYN SMITH: Well, I mean the Australian Government in principle would pick up revenue on this from charging a tax on the carbon content of imports, and one of the arguments for it is that you might never actually have to do it, because even the threat of it might tempt other countries to say, "Why do we let Australians tax imports, why don't we instead tax exports?"

And that would encourage them to introduce their own carbon tax. So I believe that if Australia and the European Union took the lead with such a "border carbon adjustments" - they call them in the literature - that could change the situation around the world by leading other countries to follow.

TICKY FULLERTON: I think yes, if we all jump in together I think that's a very interesting idea which I will bounce around. Now, can I ask you about nuclear power - because I know you're a big fan of nuclear playing a big part in our energy future. Has the global industry moved on from Fukushima or is it still in damage control in your view?

CHRIS LLEWELLYN SMITH: I think it's in damage control as far as public relations are concerned, but we have to put Fukushima in perspective, as one of a British journalist wrote. You take a crappy old 1960s power station, you hit it with the biggest tsunami and earthquake you can think of - actually bigger than anyone thought of, that's one of the problems - make every possible mistake and nobody was killed.

So we shouldn't forget that. Nobody's been killed and probably ... maybe there will be one or two radiation deaths. Think of the number of coal mining accidents every year. It's over 5,000 worldwide.

So, nuclear is dangerous, we have to treat it with great respect, but all forms of power production are dangerous and nuclear has a very, very good safety record compared to the others.

TICKY FULLERTON: It's got a big bill behind it though. I see a report just on Europe reactors is a $30 billion repair job?

CHRIS LLEWELLYN SMITH: Yes, I think the weak spot of nuclear at the moment may be that the new generation of nuclear power stations - which were cracked up to be as cheap as coal - they're coming out way over budget. We don't know if that's just because the first ones or the costs will come down.

But of course that's without putting in the cost of the external damage that burning coal does - not just climate change, of course, but also through killing people through air pollution. If you put in the external costs of coal, I think nuclear does pretty well.

TICKY FULLERTON: Let me move to an even bigger challenge: that's not nuclear fission but nuclear fusion. If it works, you say it's a million years of energy from sea water. Do you think you will see a plant in your lifetime that is both reliable and competitive?

CHRIS LLEWELLYN SMITH: Well, I'm getting on a bit, so I don't think so. And it's a very hard question to ask. I'm not ... the big question is not does it work - it does work - the sun wouldn't shine without it. The question is exactly the one you ask, when can we make it work reliably and competitively, and we can only find out by trying, and competitively we don't know what the competition will be.

But there are many steps to be taken, I'm afraid, until we're there. On a large scale it's the second part of this century, but if it works the benefits are so tremendous we've really got to give it a go even if we're not certain that it's going to work.

TICKY FULLERTON: Chris, funding is such a big issue in the alternative market, and so many clean energy projects seem to have got into trouble - I'm thinking of a lot of solar projects in the US recently. Why do you think this is? Do you think it's about funding, the complexity of it - tax and depreciation, that sort of thing - is it a euro crisis, have things been set up the wrong way?

CHRIS LLEWELLYN SMITH: Well, it's partly that commodity prices have gone up generally, so costs of everything have gone up - except solar PV by the way, photovoltaic - and there it's competition from China. The Americans claim unfair competition. I'm not convinced that's the case. I think they just ... cheaper manufacturing methods and that's what's driven the companies bust. So there are ... there are funding difficulties, but of course the price we've got to pay for not destroying the climate ... the planet with climate change is to pay more for energy, I'm afraid. But if we don't do it our grandchildren or children are going to suffer.

TICKY FULLERTON: Now, Sir Chris, you were the Director General at CERN when the Hadron Collider was mandated ...


TICKY FULLERTON: And of course we saw this announcement the discovery of the Higgs boson - it wasn't conclusive, of course - I saw one very impertinent view that it might have been a publicity stunt because of the $13 billion of sunk costs involved. Is that an issue, trying to justify the funding?

CHRIS LLEWELLYN SMITH: I think for high energy physics it's not so bad, because it is a large amount of money but we're doing it once in the whole world. So to say the whole world should come together with the cost of CERN is about the cost of one major research university every year. The whole world's funding one more university, or the equivalent of, to continue to look at very fundamental questions.

TICKY FULLERTON: Alright, Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, it's a great pleasure to talk to you. Thank you, sir.