Thursday, 3 August 2023

Electricity infrastructure

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (17:48): (372) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Energy and Resources and concerns the controversial, much-opposed Western Renewables Link and the Victoria to New South Wales Interconnector (VNI) West. From the 2010 creation of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), the Hobart-to-Townsville, 500-kilovolt AC super-grid has been a driving obsession of the organisation – big toys for big boys, perhaps. While it might have looked good 13 years ago and on paper, we now have a different market, different technology and the need for an on-the-ground project, not a theoretical idea.

Suspiciously, however, since that time everything has changed except the project itself. The costings have changed, blown out by many multiples. The reasoning has changed – originally, believe it or not, its economic rationale was to displace more expensive New South Wales black coal with cheaper Victorian brown coal – yet the project itself remains largely identical. That should set alarm bells ringing for anyone closely acquainted with the history of this project. It is clear that the plan was hatched, developed and argued for, and from that point all objections have been stubbornly rejected.

Sadly, the flawed project has been enabled by flawed systems – cost–benefit analyses which consider far too few of the costs, inadequate regulatory systems which fail to address the impact of transmission lines – and by public and government bodies with improperly aligned incentives to act. AEMO, the electricity market operator, is hopelessly conflicted in acting as Victoria’s grid planner. In fairness, Minister D’Ambrosio has done some things right. In concert with federal colleagues there is now recognition that the regulatory investment test for transmission process, the RIT-T process, is inadequate. Furthermore, the creation of VicGrid could be a real step forward. It could have a vital role to play for our state now in its earliest incarnation. As viewers of yesterday’s ABC 7.30 report saw, Victoria University’s Energy Policy Centre launched a detailed alternate solution, a plan B which would deliver the requirements of the extended VNI West project with greater resilience, far less invasiveness and extensive new transmission lines at significantly lower cost. This may sound too good to be true, but it is possible because those who conceived it, specifically Professor Bruce Mountain and Simon Bartlett, designed the solution to fit the current requirements of our electrical grid rather than attempting to remould a preconceived idea. The action I seek, Minister, is for you to allow VicGrid to undertake a genuinely independent review of the plan B analysis without pressure from the financially compromised and intellectually challenged and predetermined AEMO.