Steven Chu siting and discussing Australia's cost of electricity.

The former US Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, has said in a radio interview that Australian leaders are failing in regards to climate change and they are making the cost of electricity higher for everyone.

The physicist and former Nobel Prize winner has been in Australia this past week and believes that our leaders have a lack of foresight and understanding when it comes to the issue of climate change. When asked if Australia was facing a ‘failure of political leadership’ on climate change he responded:

“Well let’s see, what I’m saying, you can say it simply, I think the leaders in Australia are right now opting to make the cost of electricity more expensive for its citizens. Is that a failure? Yes.”

Mr Chu is a supporter of solar technologies and believes that Australia has the perfect environment for solar to reach its full potential and reduce the cost of electricity.

“In Australia you’ve got stunning sun, solar. I would hazard a guess that solar’s going to become within five years, 10 years max and maybe even today, it’s the low cost option. It certainly will be within a decade.”

Mr Chu is also a nuclear supporter. However, he also acknowledges that the economics for nuclear in Australia is ‘iffy’ and says there are also other issues against nuclear energy here. Knowing that solar is the ‘low cost option’ already; it is easy to see that it is the way of the future. Around the world, leaders are acknowledging this and implementing strategies to help its development – not hinder it as Australia seems to be doing at the moment.

“As the saying goes, the Stone Age did not end because we ran out of stones; we transitioned to better solutions.”  – Steven Chu.

Knowing that clean energy is lowering the cost of electricity and having the foresight to see that it is the way of the future means that we need to start to ‘transition.’ Earlier this year Mr Chu had a go at big energy companies and their ‘bullshit arguments’ against solar power. He told them that they should be getting into solar and not pushing against it.

Steven Chu was the US Energy Secretary from 2009 to 2013. He now works at Stanford University researching and developing energy storage systems.

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,