Climate change pioneer visits Sydney

Reporter: Mark Colvin
MARK COLVIN: Professor Jorgen Randers was one of the authors of The Limits to Growth, the controversial study which pioneered the climate change debate as far back as 1972.Its conclusion, broadly, that if the use of land, fossil fuels, water and other resources went on growing, those resources could eventually run out.Nowadays Jorgen Randers is Professor of Policy Analysis at the Norwegian School of Management.He's in Australia to give the Templeton lecture at Sydney University on Thursday evening.I asked him first to comment on what we've just heard about the new reactor in Finland.JORGEN RANDERS: I think that the cost of nuclear energy is more or less of the same order as the cost of coal-fired utilities, plus or minus 20 per cent, so the cost is not the real issue.The real difference is, of course, that in order to build a nuclear plant you need a governmental guarantee.You know, that's someone who really takes the responsibility for the long-term effects of the nuclear energy, the storage, the decommissioning, et cetera.MARK COLVIN: In other words the investors at the beginning, the private investors, aren’t actually taking much of the risk?JORGEN RANDERS: No, they are not …MARK COLVIN: Is that always the case? Has that been the case in the nuclear industry around the world, always that government has had to take the major part of risk?JORGEN RANDERS: As far as I know. I would assume that no one has been willing to take the responsibility for the long-term waste disposal of a nuclear plant. And clearly at this point in time, for instance the UK has done this interesting aspect of simplifying planning procedures for nuclear energy in England, but they have not made governmental money available, nor have they been willing to guarantee this thing, and consequently you will not see the building of nuclear energy in England.When the Finns are building their fourth or fifth plant, it is of course private consortium, but with the all-important governmental guarantee in the bottom.MARK COLVIN: So why do we keep hearing that the market is interested in getting into nuclear?JORGEN RANDERS: (Laughs). Well, this is propaganda. I mean, there are pressure groups that would like to have nuclear energy, and they of course argue as much as they can in favour of their view.MARK COLVIN: Essentially you're saying that private money can only make money out of nuclear by having the risks taken by government. So that private money takes the profit, and government gets the losses at the end.JORGEN RANDERS: This is what I'm saying, and I think that you will now see the proof or disproof of that view over the next decade in England, because now we have the situation where it is fairly simple for a private consortium to get the permissions to build nuclear capacity in England, and we will see whether they will do so.MARK COLVIN: Since the Switkowski report, which came out last week here, suddenly there's talk of having 25 nuclear stations in Australia. What do you think?JORGEN RANDERS: I think that unless your government is willing to take responsibility for the long-term storage of the waste from those plants, they won’t be built.MARK COLVIN: And what about the waste? I mean, couldn't Australia take that waste out and bury it somewhere?JORGEN RANDERS: Clearly they could. And clearly the Government could guarantee and most likely this would be done fairly well.My point of view then moves on to the question of, do I like this solution to the energy crisis? And I dislike it intensely, for moral reasons.Both your country and my country are stinking rich countries. There is no reason in the world that we should choose an energy solution which leaves part of the solution to future generations, because irrespective of how you store the waste, it is there and will be a liability for future generations.We are rich enough, in my mind, to choose solutions for the energy issue where we carry the full cost, in this generation, of the energy that we're using.So this means in your country that one basically pays for the carbon capture and storage on the coal-fired utilities. So that you generate CO2-free electricity from your resource. This increases the price of the electricity by, according to my numbers, of the order of 50 per cent, which doesn’t matter a lot, given your standard of living.MARK COLVIN: How about the coal industry, and the solutions that are proposed, for instance, geosequestration, or so-called clean coal, which means burning it in a way that puts less carbon into the atmosphere? Is that the way to go?JORGEN RANDERS: In my book, yes, it is possible to use both coal and gas in our country in ways where you do get electricity or fuels out of this energy resource, in ways where the CO2 is captured and sequestrated, to use your word, or stored underground to use my word.And that's the way to go.Yes, this is more expensive than coal or gas power without carbon capture and storage. But it is not wildly expensive, and clearly we have broad enough shoulders to carry this.MARK COLVIN: Finally, what is the big thing that you've noticed, over, say 30 years. I mean, do you now feel like a prophet who was in the wilderness but is finally being listened to?JORGEN RANDERS: Yes. I think that's a good summary. What we said 30 years ago was that resource and environmental issues would dominate the political agenda of the 21st century. This now starts to look like it's very, very true.In my book it looks as if the climate problem is the first planetary limitation that man, humanity, is approaching, and which we will have to handle. It looks as if we have more than enough resources in the world to heat the atmosphere beyond liveable conditions. So climate is it.MARK COLVIN: Has the world woken up to it too late, though?JORGEN RANDERS: That's a big question. It may have done so, but there are tremendous things that can be done. I headed this governmental commission in Norway that reported last month on a plan for how Norway can reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by two thirds by 2050.And the unanimous conclusion of that commission was that this is very important to do, it's easily done, even with known technologies. And you do not need to rely on nuclear and things like this in order to do so.And thirdly, that it is not impossibly cheap. It actually, it's very cheap, so all what we need, it's a decision-making challenge, in other words, leadership.MARK COLVIN: Professor Jorgen Randers of Norway, who's giving the Templeton lecture at Sydney University on Thursday evening