CSIRO ‘cherry pick' data to support renewables, sideline cheaper black coal energy expert claims

Sky News AU

3 days ago

Centre for Independent Studies senior policy analyst Zoe Hilton has claimed the CSIRO performed a "shocking cherry pick" by claiming renewables were the lowest cost new build energy generation technology.
The agency's GenCost report found black coal cost $111 per megawatt hour at the lowest end of annual forecasts while backed-up wind and solar was $116 MWh under the cheapest model, despite the corresponding media release claiming renewables were cheaper.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen repeated that claim, using it to justify the Albanese government's push to drastically reshape Australia's energy grid with battery-backed renewables.
However, Ms Hilton argued CSIRO's report 'very clearly shows' black coal is the cheapest new build generation technology.
'They don't look at brown coal though, just saying that, but $111 per megawatt hour, you can see on that chart it's very clear that black coal wins. It is cheaper than all of the 60, 70, 80, 90 per cent variable renewable energy shares,' she told Sky News Australia.
'Then when you look at the midpoints of those ranges as well. Coal is cheaper than 90 per cent wind and solar when it is integrated into the grid and that's very important because 90 per cent of wind and solar is what we're building.'
The energy expert then took aim at the discrepancy between the report's findings and the corresponding media release, accusing the CSIRO of misleading the public by withholding key information .
'This is quite a shocking cherry pick,' she said.
'They call their GenCost report transparent and then they say in their own report that their modelling for the renewables integration costs is not suitable for general release.
"We've asked time and time again for them to release this modelling… apparently, it's so embarrassingly bad that they can't even release it.'
Ms Hilton also claimed the CSIRO had deliberately framed its 2030 analysis to favour renewables.
'The way that they do that is they say: 'Oh, well, by 2030, we will have built all of these things that support renewables.' So things like Snowy 2.0, which is at $12 billion and counting and more pumped hydro projects, a lot more batteries,' she said.
'A whole bunch of transmission projects, which are going to be more billions of dollars that are added onto consumer bills. All of that, everything that is built before 2030, they just assume: 'Okay, it's going to be free, and we don't have to count that in the renewables cost.'
'They also assume very pessimistic assumptions for coal. So they assume that instead of building the same type of plant that we've built time and time again in Australia. We would have to build an advanced ultra supercritical plant.
'A plant like that, that they assume with unprecedented steam temperatures and pressures that hasn't been built anywhere else in the world.'
In addition, Ms Hilton noted the CSIRO had not considered brownfield projects, which involve upgrading coal plants on an existing site and could save 'a lot of money' on roads, transport and infrastructure.
'They assume we have to build on a greenfield site, and so all of those extra costs, like a train line to get the coal to the coal plant, all of is added in and that pushes up the price of coal,' she said.
'Then you look at the coal fuel prices, they cherry pick those as well, because they have a number of different values for the low and the high ranges, and they take the average of the low values and the absolute maximum of the high values.
'It's this very asymmetrical way that they choose fuel prices and that ends up having the coal high price range be much higher than realistically it should be.'