Only in Australia would an iconic infrastructure company double as a corruption cesspit.
Snowy Hydro is a kind of Canberra plaything; a dirty quango without values or direction.
It pisses money away like rain on the mountainside, employs proven energy wreckers, and adds tens of billions of unnecessary costs to the energy transition.
Let’s take a look at its recent record.
When PM Malcolm Turnbull pulled Snowy Hydro 2.0 out of his butt in 2017, it was supposed to cost $2 billion.
The feasibility study came later. It was done as a sop to make Turnbull’s LNP look like it gave two hoots about climate change.
Since then, Snowy Hydro 2.0 has undergone step changes in cost, the latest being $12 billion, with more to come.
SH2.0 will produce 2.2GW of stored power. For the same amount, we could install grid-scale batteries with 50% more capacity, and the price of that is falling, while the price of SH2.0 is rising.
Fresh from this debacle, Snowy Hydro appointed former CEO of Santos, David Knox, as Chair.
Knox was the CEO of Santos when the firm formed the East Coast gas cartel by lying to Australia about having enough gas for its LNG operation.
No man has done greater harm to the energy transition.
Still not done, the Morrison government next ordered Snowy Hydro to build the Kurri Kurri gas peaker for $600 million in 2021.
The site chosen had no gas pipeline because it was a form of pork, so the plant tried to run on diesel instead.
It turned into a putrid fossil fuel stinkhole and was shut down on that basis as well.
It was supposed to be convertible to hydrogen, but there isn’t any.
The latest news is that the gas pipeline is now complete, but only one turbine is operational. The cost has ballooned to $1.3 billion plus the pipeline for $450 million.
Today, we get another Snowy Hydro boondoggle.
Not one private wind power project has been commissioned in Australia this year. Until now!
Two major renewable power purchasing deals signed by Snowy Hydro will propel a large wind farm project and a battery towards construction just when a major acceleration of clean energy development is needed to reach the Albanese government’s 2030 climate goals.
…“It’s unlikely that many proponents want to sign a power purchase agreement [PPA] at what would be above $100 a megawatt-hour,” Dixon said.
Wholesale power prices averaged $87 a megawatt-hour across the National Electricity Market in the September quarter, according to the energy market operator.
This is very expensive wind power, bought by the government (Snowy Hydro) at nosebleed prices to make it look like the energy transition is progressing, when in reality it has stalled.
If Snowy Hydro was ever some national icon, that prestige is long lost.
Today, it is a political pisspot in which successive governments urinate public funds for performative pet projects to cover up their energy policy failures.
Sell it off so we can get some accountability.
