As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I speak about the Auditor-General's
performance audit titled, No. 33—Performance audit—Snowy 2.0 governance
of early implementation: Snowy Hydro Limited.
Some background for those who may be new to this project: Snowy 2.0 is an extension of the Snowy
Hydro project, hence the name. In 2017, Prime Minister Turnbull announced the cost of Snowy 2.0
as $2 billion. This report states that the cost is now $5.1 billion plus billions of other costs,
totalling well over $10 billion. The completion date is out to 2025, so we can expect further cost
blowouts. The project involves using electricity from unreliable sources like wind and solar to
pump water from a lower reservoir, Talbingo Dam, through underground pipes to an upper reservoir,
Tantangara Dam. Water is then sent back down to Talbingo Dam, generating electricity on the way.
Snowy 2.0 is referred to as a 'big battery' because water is stored in the top reservoir until
it is needed. The same turbine is either pumping water uphill or generating electricity from the
water coming down. The total pipe length is 27 kilometres. Generally, water is pumped up during
the day—provided the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. The water is then released down the
pipe to generate electricity in the evening peak, when it's most needed. As the sun does not shine
and wind goes quiet at night, pumping water back up the hill overnight, ready for the morning peak,
will need coal power. The upper reservoir may hold multiple days worth of water and, at some point,
the dam must be refilled, especially as Tantangara Dam is currently only 17 per cent full.
Pumped hydro only works when the dam has water in it. For every megawatt of power generated by
water coming down the hill, the turbine needs 1.3 megawatts of power to get the water back
up, because of losses. In total, 30 per cent more coal is used in Snowy 2.0. Pumped hydro,
put simply, entails generating electricity 2.3 times to be used by consumers once.
This is not cheap electricity; it's actually really expensive electricity.
The solar and wind fairy tale needs pumped hydro as a way of storing unreliable wind and power
generation, which occurs mostly during the day, and moving that capacity to the evening peek,
when unreliable solar and wind can't provide baseload power.
Maximum generation for Snowy 2.0 is an impressive 2,000 megawatts,
but here's the catch: annual generation is listed in this report as 350,000 megawatt hours. Running
at full capacity, Snowy 2.0 will generate electricity for only 175 hours a year. To put
that into perspective, my home state of Queensland used 68 million megawatt hours last year. Snowy
Hydro will contribute the equivalent of half of one per cent of Queensland's power each year,
one-tenth of one per cent of Australia's annual generation, at a cost of $5 billion and rising—and
that doesn't include all the costs. This madness will send us broke. There's a far better way:
a 2,000-megawatt coal-fired power station is able to run at 2,000 megawatts 98 per cent of
the time, 24/7. Liddell in the Hunter Valley generated nine million megawatts last year.
For less than the cost of this green fairy tale called Snowy 2.0,
a coal plant can produce at least 25 times the amount of electricity. That's why Germany's
Greens coalition government is turning Germany's coal-fired power stations back on.
Shutting ours down when we see what's happening in the rest of the world is
criminal irresponsibility. Prime Minister Albanese is promising reduced electricity prices while at
the same time building horribly expensive power generation. The Prime Minister's agenda will fail,
and he will take Australia down with him. Instead, One Nation will build baseload power stations,
reduce the cost of electricity, restore grid reliability, restore grid stability,
restore Australian manufacturing and restore the income of working Australians.