John Mather has worked in electricity markets in more than a dozen countries. He started at PowerGen in 1990, weeks before privatisation, when the UK was inventing the first electricity market anyone had built. He was in the room for the Longford gas crisis in Victoria. So when he says the two nuclear plants Britain is currently paying EDF to build will be white elephants by the time they commission, it's worth hearing why.
His argument: the technology has moved too fast for centralised generation to make sense. Australia's rooftop solar penetration is unmatched anywhere in the world, South Australia leads on home batteries, and the wholesale price here is heading to zero or near zero for ten or twelve hours a day. That changes what a grid is for — and it makes energy-intensive industry a mobile asset that will follow cheap power.
We also get into why private companies adopt new energy technology faster than public ones, why the UK is falling behind Australia on EVs, and what "peak" and "off-peak" even mean once storage is everywhere. Connect with Sohail Hasnie:
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