An experienced energy industry figure has described Snowy 2.0 as a $10 billion white elephant. 

Five years ago, the Turnbull government announced that its Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project would “increase the generation of the Snowy Hydro scheme by 50 per cent, adding 2000 megawatts of renewable energy to the National Electricity Market (NEM)”. 

The plan at the time was to add a big battery to the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme at a cost of $2 billion. The government said it would bring down electricity prices, generate renewable energy and incur minimal environmental impact on Kosciuszko National Park.

Reflecting this week, former managing director of PowerNet, GasNet, EnergyAustralia, China Light & Power Systems (Hong Kong), Ted Woodley, said; “Not one of these grand claims has turned out to be true”.

Timelines have blown out, with Snowy Hydro now expecting completion by 2026 - five years late. Reports say construction of new tunnels is running at least six months late, and that any transmission connection is unlikely to be built by 2026. 

The estimated cost has ballooned five-fold, to over $10 billion. This is in line with warnings that the Prime Minister and the then NSW premier received in 2020.

“The massive cost and environmental impacts of Snowy 2.0 cannot be justified for providing occasional longer-term storage,” Mr Woodley says. 

“Despite Snowy 2.0’s abysmal track record over the past five years, the Commonwealth and NSW governments continue to bend over backwards with billion-dollar subsidies (and more to come), electricity price increases and environmental exemptions, despite conclusive evidence that the project is fundamentally flawed and can never pay for itself,” Mr Woodley wrote in an opinion article published this week.