Which is cheaper: nuclear or renewables?

Net Zero Australia's estimate makes the $387 billion figure look like an absolute bargain, and it was quickly seized on by the federal opposition, although I think I had posted on Twitter even before they were onto it.

Their other figures are also different from CSIRO's, and this is because they more accurately take into account the storage and redundancies that are needed for "renewables" (I put the word in quotes because while there is an endless supply of wind and sunshine, the materials that go into capturing their energy are in short supply, and often can't be recycled).

To properly back up wind and solar for periods of low wind and sun you need a lot of cables to connect one part of the country to another, plus a lot of generating capacity that will sit idle most of the time, as well as storage.

Even then, you also need fossil fuel electricity generation on standby because the cost of backing up a renewable grid rises exponentially the closer you get to using renewables for 100 percent of the backup. This makes the cost of 100 percent renewable backup astronomical.

CSIRO downplays these costs and treats the hydro Snowy 2.0 and the network as sunk costs out to 2030, so they come up with ludicrously low figures for the Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) of renewables.

Even their pricing on the capital cost of storage would appear to be wrong.

The latest Queensland budget provides estimates for the cost of 2 GWs of pumped hydro proposed for Borumba, behind Noosa, as well as the actual cost of two large two-hour batteries.

In the case of the batteries, the Queensland costs are between 21 percent and 33 percent higher than those CSIRO uses, while the pumped hydro is 61 percent more expensive (and that's before the inevitable cost overruns). The pumped hydro will also not be ready until the next decade.

Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project in New South Wales' Kosciuszko National Park, Australia in this undated photo. (New South Wales Department of Planning, Industry and Environment)

Could this impact Labor's future election chances?

We have a serious problem in this country. The minister is either innumerate or has zero interest in interrogating his advice and advisors. While government agencies seem to have been captured by vested interests, in this case, renewable energy firms.

A decade ago, I wouldn't have believed this level of incompetence and capture could exist, but having just seen the mess our agencies made of COVID it seems this might be the new normal.

Or maybe not.