Method & Sources

Energy Realism makes a case: that Australia is better served by nuclear, plus its own gas and coal, than by a renewables build whose materials are dug up, refined and manufactured through China. That's a point of view, and we don't hide it. What it isn't is invented — every number is sourced, and where the evidence cuts against the argument, we say so on the page.

What we concede

On lifecycle carbon, wind and solar beat coal and gas — decisively (coal ~820, gas ~490, solar ~40, wind ~11 g/kWh). We state that openly and never pretend otherwise. Our argument is not that renewables are dirty; it's that their fullcost — in dollars, materials, China-dependence, firming, deliverability and waste — is worse for Australia than nuclear and domestic fossil fuels, once you count what the "cheapest power per megawatt-hour" headline leaves out. The cure, not the disease. A case built on a true concession is far harder to dismiss than one that overclaims.

The bar every figure clears

Comprehensive — count the whole system, not one generator

Sourced — a named primary source + a date for every number

Fresh — refreshed from Ember / EIA / AEMO, human-approved

Honest — estimates flagged, concessions made, the other side shown

The rules we hold

Per-TWh, not per-megawatt

Material and cost intensity are always given per unit of energy delivered, which bakes in the capacity-factor gap (solar runs ~23% of the time, nuclear ~92%). Per-MW comparisons flatter intermittent sources and we don't use them.

Mining is not refining

China's chokehold is midstream — refining and manufacturing (polysilicon ~95%, graphite >90%, rare-earth separation ~90%) — not ore in the ground. We say which we mean, every time.

Firm capacity is counted

Variable renewables don't inherently supply firm capacity, so the dispatchable backup they still require is counted as a real, additional system cost — not waved away.

Estimates are labelled

A figure with a single authoritative source is a FACT. A figure we've reconstructed (capacity × vintage cost, etc.) is an ESTIMATE, shown with a range. We never dress one up as the other.

How the Energy Realism Score is built

The Scoregrades Australia's current strategy 0–100 across six pillars — affordability, reliability, sovereignty, material efficiency, waste and deliverability — each scored from sourced evidence, the overall being their average. It is deliberately not a carbon score(renewables would win that one); it measures the dimensions the transition's own accounting tends to omit. The inputs are visible on every pillar so you can argue with them.

How it stays current

A monthly job pulls the latest figures from Ember, the US EIA and Australian sources and proposesupdates into a review queue. A human approves each one before it ever appears — nothing auto-publishes. See what has changed on the Updates log.

Primary sources

Ember · US EIA · AEMO (ISP, ESOO) · DCCEEW / Australian Energy Statistics · Clean Energy Regulator · Clean Energy Council · ABS National Accounts · IEA (Critical Minerals, Solar PV Supply Chains) · IRENA · USGS · CSIRO GenCost · World Nuclear Association · IAEA · IPCC AR5 · UNECE lifecycle. Full working for the headline figures is kept in the repo's TOTAL_BILL_RESEARCH.md and REAL_COST_RESEARCH.md.