Understanding Brookfield as a nuclear power company – as well as a renewable energy one

THE NUCLEAR FILES #4: We dig deeper into Brookfield’s connections with the “nuclear club” and what Mark Carney former governor of the Bank fo England and now chair for this giant asset owner says about nuclear energy.

In Australia, we predominantly know Brookfield as an aggressive investor in the property, utilities and energy sectors, with very (very) deep pockets.

Elsewhere, it turns out Brookfield also is very well known as a nuclear assets owner and a highly-enthusiastic proponent for more. While Brookfield Australia/Asia Pacific declined to respond to The Fifth Estate’s questions for this series, it did point us to comments made previously by Mark Carney, Brookfield chair and head of transition investing, and former Governor of the Bank of England, said that:

Every credible net-zero pathway relies on significant growth in nuclear power. It is an essential, reliable zero-carbon technology that directly displaces fossil fuels and supports the growth of renewables by providing critical baseload to our grids. 

You can also see its 2022 White Paper, A New Dawn for Nuclear Power, which states, presumably from a North American perspective, that:

To reach net-zero emissions by 2050, a massive deployment of all available clean energy technologies is required. Hydro, solar, wind power and energy storage are all part of the solution, but as a clean source of baseload power, nuclear power will also play a key role. In fact, there is no credible net-zero scenario in which nuclear does not grow its capacity from today.

In Australia, by contrast, we have a very clear scenario and strategy, for a net zero energy transition without nuclear energy (which has been banned nationally since 1998).

It’s been developed by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), which runs the energy grids, called  Integrated System Plan (ISP). The nuclear club hates it, as does the influential IPA, and the Opposition is no fan either.

Brookfield’s nuclear network

Brookfield is the 51 per cent-majority owner of Westinghouse Electric, a world-leading nuclear services company, in partnership with 49 per cent-owner Cameco.

Cameco, self-described as one of the world’s largest publicly traded uranium companies, is very active in Australia too, with major uranium mine prospects in Western Australia.  (According to the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA), the mining lobby wants to open up more access for uranium miners, with Australia hosting one-third of global reserves, and it wants nuclear power in Australia too.)

Comeco’s mine prospects are Kintyre in the Pilbara, and Yeelirrie in the Gold Fields district. Both of which have key approvals and community/land rights agreements in place, and are exempted from WA’s 2017 moratorium on new uranium mines, but have not yet started actual mining, as they wait for global demand to spike and uranium prices to go higher

If you ask what’s in this for Cameco, then this uranium market report, suggesting a “global nuclear Renaissance”, which actually profiles O’Brien and his pro-nuclear quest, will help to explain it. More nuclear power stations means more demand for uranium which drives up prices and could get mines like Kintyre and Yeelirrie underway.

Cameco also declined to respond to The Fifth Estate for this series.

US-based Westinghouse, meanwhile, is Big Nuke in a brand!

Westinghouse describes itself as: “… the largest provider of infrastructure services to the world’s nuclear power facilities, providing fuel, maintenance and repair services, plant components and parts, and sophisticated engineering services to two-thirds of the world’s nuclear generation plants.”

Saying G’day to “Big Nuke”

When Ted O’Brien, Coalition Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy, went on his study tour to North America with the nuclear club in January-February 2023, visits to Brookfield, Cameco and Westinghouse were all on the itinerary (read earlier article).

Before the Brookfield-Cameco joint venture deal was concluded near the end of 2023, having first been flagged in October 2022, an investment arm of Brookfield had owned 100 per cent of Westinghouse. (Having acquired it as a distressed asset in 2018, when the nuclear industry was really in the doldrums, in the US and globally, and bad projects sent Westinghouse into bankruptcy.)

Back in Australia, meanwhile, Brookfield already had a big toe in the energy sector, as outlined in this earlier article in this series from The Fifth Estate.

So, in a material sense, Big Nuke via the Brookfield-Cameco-Westinghouse extended family is already in Australia.

Which begs an obvious question: Is Brookfield-Cameco-Westinghouse biding its time for nuclear down under opportunities? Or, at least, would it seize that opportunity if a change in Australian politics and law opened a door to nuclear power investments, as the Opposition intends?

Obviously Brookfield is energy hungry, in Australia and globally. And the Coalition appears to be equally hungry to secure credible interest in nuclear investment in Australia.

For now at least, however, it’s only the Opposition, not the government, that has that interest although there’s a national election due by May 2025.

It’s instructive that nuclear club strategist, study tour member, and now O’Brien senior adviser, James Fleay, is on the record as saying words to the effect that the key to unlocking nuclear power in Australia, by gaining decisive political buy-in, is to find investors ready to commit to real projects.

Fleay speculated that a credible proponent could be an “international JV (joint venture)” adding: “We are trying to steer advocacy in the direction of finding a credible proponent that will change politicians attitudes.” (See towards the end of the May 2022 recording of the Nuclear Barbarians podcast with Emmet Penney, featuring James Fleay as the interview guest.)

Brookfield keeps us guessing

As it turns out, everyone is kept guessing about Brookfield’s next moves in the Australian energy sector, and globally, in 2024 and beyond. That’s the nature of this mercurial mega-investor.

In the last months of 2023, however, the company looked certain to win the Origin Energy prize. Especially when Brookfield gained approval from the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) in October 2023, in spite of its recent acquisition of network and transmission business AusNet, and had acceptance of an improved offer from the Origin board.

(Competition and market regulators have traditionally frowned on vertically-integrated energy asset holders owning generation, distribution and retail supply.)

But then, in a shock outcome to one of Australia’s most newsworthy takeover battles in years, Brookfield failed at the final hurdle last December, when it fell short in a crucial shareholder vote. Blocked ultimately by ”Big Super” in Australia, in the form of late opposition to the deal from Origin’s largest shareholder, with a 17 per cent shareholding, AustralianSuper.

NEXT UP: more deep dives for The Nuclear Files, including the question: Who was paying for Ted’s and friends’ “excellent adventure” in nuclear North America?

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