Snowy 2.0 is the Trillion dollar Black Hole of Australia — sucking in energy, money, land, industrial relations, the dollar, our lifestyle

Image by Marcus from Pixabay

By Jo Nova

Coming over the event horizon — a project so bad it could break the nation

Snowy 2.0, the pumped hydro “battery” is far worse than we thought, and we thought it would destroy lakes, rivers, farms, cheap electricity and national productivity. But it’s worse than that.  Now it’s been infected with Victorian Union style contract bombs, which will spread to all the attached transmission tentacle projects, and blow out their budgets too.

The government (us) is backing everything, guaranteeing profits for foreign companies and super sweet salary packages for union workers and the project is “too big to fail” and the debts promised for years to come. Imagine if you took witchcraft masquerading as science, hyped it with childish modeling,  managed it with world class incompetence and mixed it with the worst union cartels, then locked it all into a 35 year contract. “Hey ho!”

For foreign readers, the CFMEU is the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union, which is being investigated for corruption that may have cost the Victorian government people some $15 billion dollars. In the words of the administrator the Victorian branch of the CFMEU was “no longer a trade union but more like a crime syndicate”.

You might wonder what union corruption has to do with bad science, but they all grow from the same self-serving pot. Bad science was used to justify Big Stupid Projects (like trying to use power stations to stop storms in 2100!). And Big Stupid Projects attract stupid people and greedy people. So we end up with stupid government managers that accept terrible deals from greedy unionists — deals that are so bad the government doesn’t even want to reveal the true cost because it’s too embarrassing. And none of the scientists want to speak up because their salaries depend on keeping the myth alive that renewables are cheap and worth pursuing.

And thus Snowy 2.0 becomes the black hole that bends space and time in every direction. It consumes land, money, energy, Australian productivity and industrial relations.

One trillion dollars is about $40,000 for every man, woman and child — wasted on a frivolous quest to make the weather nicer a hundred years from now. Let’s just ask Australian’s who wants to buy this? 

Snowy 2.0 union deal set to trigger $1 trillion network charge for Australians

By Robert Gottleibsen, The Australian

The addition of the CFMEU locks in a $1 trillion network charge bill that will hit all power users. To escape the looming exorbitant network charges Australians who invested large sums in roof top solar and batteries will need to consider diesel generating back up even though that will increase the burden on everyone else.

What was a $2 billion dollar project is now likely to cost $40 billion, but amped up the “union rules” the total extended budget is orbiting the GDP.

But now that $40bn cost is set to explode because the project developers have signed an agreement with the CFMEU and linked unions to embrace very similar provisions to those planned for the Victorian Suburban Rail Link.

Not only are there huge pay rises but effectively the CFMEU people will be joint managers of one of the most complex tunnelling projects ever attempted in Australia. Governance goes out the window.

Image by Tom from Pixabay

Snowy 2.0 is not just a pipe and a turbine, it’s a web of pylons and wires across thousands of miles:

To transmit the electricity over these huge distances, around 2000 towers — often 60 to 70 metres high or almost the height of the Sydney Harbour Bridge pylons — must be erected on Australia’s prime farming land. That power then drives water up to a giant dam in the “high country”.

So the “cost plus” horror contract will spread into huge industrial projects. The big bonanza win for the Union was to get the government to agree to cover the budget blowouts whenever unions “won” a better pay deal. This meant there was no cost to the company or the union in those decisions. And the government wouldn’t want to complain because as Gottleibsen says if people knew about much these things cost, “that would explode the “renewables are cheap” myth.” Gottleibsen estimates there is a trillion dollars in government liabilities “hidden” from official estimates. The total cost of transmission lines alone could be as much as $450 billion. He is astonished that  things could get this bad:

My appeal is to the ALP caucus. You will have to explain to your family what you did to boost power prices and the cost of living for at least 35 years.

Worse still, you were so ashamed at what you were doing that you concealed it.

The first clue that there is government unease about the “missing trillion” came from Finance Minister Katy Gallagher. In an interview with The Australian, she said it would be unsustainable for the government to indefinitely continue supercharged spending on the “net zero” transition.

Snowy 2.0 also shows the industrial-relations danger. Once government-backed megaprojects become too big to fail, contractors and unions gain enormous leverage. If taxpayers or electricity consumers are ultimately on the hook, every delay, variation and wage condition can be rolled into the final bill. What began as an energy policy becomes an infrastructure disease.

The political class promised Australians a clean, cheap, modern grid. What they are building instead is a debt-funded machine for turning public money into private guarantees, higher power bills, ruined farmland and permanent dependence on bureaucratic modelling.