We fact checked Dick Smith on whether a country can run entirely on renewables. Here's what we found

RMIT ABC Fact Check presents the latest in fact checking and misinformation. (ABC News: Brett Worthington)

CheckMate March 22, 2024

This week, CheckMate examines two claims — one each from businessman Dick Smith and energy minister Chris Bowen — related to the renewed debate around a possible introduction of nuclear power in Australia.

Editor's note (March 26, 2024): The first version of this article was based on the inference that in Mr Smith's interview with 2GB he was only referring to electricity grids. After publication Mr Smith clarified that he was referring to the full energy mix. This article has been updated to reflect that, and to add information on other off-grid energy sources of four countries whose grids are 100 per cent renewable. It has also added a statement from the CSIRO responding to Mr Smith's assertions regarding that organisation. The article also previously incorrectly stated that Mr Smith had rejected renewable-led electricity generation; this has been amended. The ABC apologises to Mr Smith for the error.

Can a country run entirely on renewable energy?

Even considering just wind and solar, research suggests renewables could power an entire country with the right infrastructure. (Supplied: Queensland government)

Businessman Dick Smith has thrown his support behind calls to introduce nuclear-generated power to Australia.

Appearing on Sydney radio station 2GB earlier this week, Mr Smith said Australia "should be making a decision to go nuclear now", pouring cold water on suggestions that wind and solar alone could accomplish the nation's energy transition.

"Look, I can tell you, this claim by the CSIRO that you can run a whole country on solar and wind is simply a lie," Mr Smith said.

"It is not true. They are telling lies. No country has ever been able to run entirely on renewables — that's impossible."

In response, the CSIRO said that it "has not made public statements of that nature" and said its position is that "Renewables are a critical part, but not the only part, of the energy mix as Australia moves towards the government-legislated target of net zero emissions by 2050".

The national science agency's latest annual GenCost report, released in July 2023, found that wind and solar remained the cheapest form of new-build electricity generation.

Fact Check asked Mr Smith to provide examples of where the CSIRO asserted this. Mr Smith said that the claim was made over two years ago by a CSIRO employee in a radio interview and that "In the last two years I have quoted it many times in radio and TV interviews and not at any time has the CSIRO contacted me to say that it is not their belief that a country can run wholly on solar and wind".

Experts consulted by Fact Check disagreed with Mr Smith's statement that no country could run solely on renewables.

Mark Diesendorf, an expert on sustainable energy and energy policy from the University of New South Wales, said it was possible to run a country's electricity grid on renewable energy.

"Several countries (and Tasmania) already run their electricity systems on 100 per cent renewables," he said in an email, noting that such places relied heavily on hydro power.

There are already countries which get 100 per cent of their energy from a combination of wind, water and solar, according to one expert. (ABC News: Jade Macmillan)

In a letter to the ABC following original publication of this piece, Mr Smith disputed Professor Diesendorf's assertion, saying: "I have never said that the electrical system could not run on 100 percent renewables."

Mr Smith also disputed Professor Diesendorf's comments about Tasmania because they don't mention "the millennium drought where the electrical system in Tasmania was not run on 100 percent renewables."

Turning to wind and solar-generated power alone, Andrew Blakers, a professor of engineering at the Australian National University's Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster solutions, told Fact Check: "Several detailed studies show that [getting to] 100 per cent renewables [on the electricity grid] based mostly on solar and wind is quite straightforward, provided that enough transmission and storage is built."

Professor Blakers pointed to studies conducted by his research group investigating the feasibility of 100 per cent renewables in a number of countries, including Australia.

"[Solar] and wind [would] allow Australia to reach 100 per cent renewable electricity [on the electricity grid] rapidly at low cost," concluded one such study, co-authored by Professor Blakers and published in 2017.

As for the countries putting renewable power to the test, Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University in the US, and director of its Atmosphere/Energy Program, pointed Fact Check to a detailed list of countries at or near the 100 per cent renewable energy mark.

"There are four countries running on 100 per cent wind-water-solar (WWS) alone for their grid electricity," he said in an email, noting that a further three countries relied on WWS for 99.78 per cent to 99.99 per cent of their electricity generation, while 45 countries were above 50 per cent.

According to a document produced and supplied by Professor Jacobson, the four countries running on 100 per cent WWS in 2021 were Albania, Bhutan, Nepal and Paraguay.

In his letter to the ABC, Mr Smith rejected this analysis, saying: "These are very poor countries where the people mainly rely on firewood for heating and cooking, and all use large amounts of fossil fuels for transport."

During a severe drought in 2022 Albania imported electricity to supplement its domestic supplies.

It's important to note, that figures for these four countries only include energy generation connected to the grid such as, hydro, wind and solar.

Mr Smith later clarified in his letter to the ABC: "I am referring to a country running 'entirely on renewables' not merely 'for their grid electricity'."

When looking at total energy supply, a measure which includes off-grid generation and transport fuel, renewables in Albania contributed 33.7 per cent in 2021, with the rest contributed by fossil fuels, biofuels and waste, according to the International Energy Agency.

Meanwhile, renewables contribute 37.5 per cent in Paraguay and 6.1 per cent in Nepal.

For context, in Australia, renewables contributed 5.4 per cent in 2022.

But Professor Blakers said this measure was "not useful" in the context of electrification of the grid, due to differences in the energy efficiency of renewables and other sources.

Mr Smith has previously used the percentage of power generated by the electricity grid to advocate for nuclear energy.

"France is 70 per cent nuclear," he said in an interview with 2GB in November, citing a figure which accorded with the IEA's statistics for the French energy grid in 2018.

In 2022, that figure was 62 per cent, and that same year, nuclear's total energy supply for France was 36.5 per cent.

When it came to regions with a comparable or greater population size to that of Australia, Professor Jacobson pointed to the US state of California, which has a population of around 39 million.

As of Tuesday this week, he said, the state, which is aiming for 100 per cent carbon-free electricity by 2045, had "been running on more than 100 per cent WWS for 10 out of the last 11 days for between 0.25 and 6 hours per day".

In 2022, renewables made up around 45 per cent of the state's energy mix, while nuclear made up around 9 per cent.

The US state of California, with a population greater than Australia, has run on only renewable energy for short periods of time. (Walmart; Flickr.com/CC/BY/2.0)

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has forecast that renewables will be able to meet the entire demand of the national electricity market (NEM) by 2025, albeit for short periods of time (for example, 30 minutes).

Introducing AEMO's 2022 Engineering Roadmap to 100 per cent Renewables, CEO Daniel Westermen wrote that "the power system will require additional engineering solutions to provide essential system services to maintain a stable electrical voltage and frequency and ensure a secure state of operation".

"Proven technologies such as synchronous condensers will play a role, alongside newer technologies such as grid-forming inverters. The human dimensions of this transition are as important as the technical requirements."

Does Australia have the most solar coverage compared to other continents? ABC Fact Check investigates.

In addition, a 2021 report from the Grattan Institute noted that "getting to 100 per cent renewable energy [in Australia] over the next two decades would be expensive unless there are major technological advances to backup renewable supply through rare winter wind droughts".

"That's why Australia should commit only to net zero emissions in the NEM by the 2040s, not absolute zero emissions or 100 per cent renewable energy."

As the institute's James Ha explained at the time, net zero emissions doesn't "require that all electricity people use within the jurisdiction come from renewable sources".

"Some might come from coal or gas-fired generation, but the government offsets this amount by making or buying an equivalent amount of renewable electricity."

Chris Bowen says the average time taken to build a nuclear plant in the US has been 19 years. Is that correct?

Staying with the debate surrounding nuclear power, a suggestion by Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy Ted O'Brien that a nuclear power plant could be up and running in Australia within 10 years has been shot down by his Labor counterpart, Chris Bowen.

"Tell him he's dreaming," Mr Bowen, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, said in an interview with ABC TV's Insiders program.

"I could point to the United States' experience … with a very developed regulatory regime, with a very developed nuclear industry, the nuclear leader of the world. The average build time of a nuclear power plant in the United States has been 19 years."

But Fact Check this week found that claim to be exaggerated.

Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen says the average build time for a nuclear power plant in the United States has been nearly two decades. Is that correct? RMIT ABC Fact Check runs the numbers.

According to a spokeswoman for Mr Bowen's office, the minister's calculation only included the three reactors constructed in the US between 1991 and 2022, which had an average build time of 20.6 years. However, two additional reactors were connected to the grid in the past 12 months (in the state of Georgia), with build times of 10.1 and 10.4 years.

Experts contacted by Fact Check said that two of the three reactors covered by Mr Bowen's calculation experienced significant delays that were not typical of the US experience, and that there was no good reason to ignore reactors built earlier than 1991.

Including earlier reactors and the two recent additions resulted in a lower average: 8.1 years for all reactors built since 1950 and 8.8 years for those built since 1970.

Importantly, none of these figures included any time for planning, design or changes to regulation, which would be necessary in Australia.

Edited by Ellen McCutchan

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This article was undertaken through a collaborative partnership between RMIT University and the ABC, which concluded in June 2024. The article should be attributed as "RMIT ABC Fact Check [date]"

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