Greens Call for Essential Services to Be Returned to Government Ownership

Party leader of the Australian Greens Adam Bandt addresses the media after the resignation of Senator Lidia Thorpe from the Australian Greens Party at Parliament House on February 06, 2023 in Canberra, Australia. (Martin Ollman/Getty Images)

The Australian Greens want the federal government to turn back the clock and become a net provider of essential services in the Australian energy industry, with party leader Adam Bandt decrying the private ownership of the energy sector.

Bandt, during his address to the National Press Club, said that Australia needed large-scale public investment in the sector to drive the national transition to renewable energy sources.

“We need a significant investment, publicly led, to shift Australia to 100 percent renewables and create new export industries,” he said.

He argued the government was already involved in the sector through the Snowy Hydro electricity generator, which has a retail arm attached, and that ramping up the project would enable it to replace the current fleet of coal-fired power generators on the eastern seaboard.

“We want to see that massively beefed up,” he said.

“A new revamped Snowy Hydro. A new build of publicly owned renewable energy to replace the approximately 25 gigawatts, which is roughly the size of Australia’s coal fleet at the moment.

“Let’s build that again in renewables. A big, significant public investment to build new generations to build new transmission, and critically to build new export industries.”

Snowy Hydro Greens Answer to Transition

The Snowy Hydro 2.0 project was first started in 2017 under the Coalition government as an extension to the Snowy Mountains hydro scheme, which was built between 1949 and 1974 to add 2,000 megawatts of generation capacity to the power grid.

It will operate similarly to a natural battery by using excess wind and solar energy to pump water from the lower dam to the higher one and release the water during peak periods to produce electricity.

Bandt also called for the federal government to focus heavily on the country’s energy transmission network, which he said was in a significant state of disrepair.

“Let’s extend our transmission lines again through significant public investment.”

Bandt said that the fact that some of Australia’s transmission lines and energy interconnections were part-owned by a Cayman Islands registered company was not okay.

“This should be in public hands. It is an essential service, and it should be in public hands. So big, significant public investment to build new generation to build new transmission, and critically to build new export industries,” he said.

Transition to Renewables By 2030 Misleading

But Bandt’s call to ramp up the country’s largest renewable project, the Snowy Hydro, comes as it has been revealed the build has been beset by delays, pushing out its deadline by two years to 2030.

The project will connect two dams in southern New South Wales via 27 kilometres of tunnels and a new power station located 800 metres underground. The project was initially estimated to complete in 2021 with a $2 billion budget, which was later revised to $5.1 billion, this has now been expanded by another $2.2 billion.

The delays are said to have struck the federal government’s plan to make Australia reach net-zero by 2030 hard.

Former CEO of Snowy Hydro 2.0, Paul Broad, who ran the project for ten years but resigned recently due to differences with the Energy Minister Chris Bowen, said that he was deeply concerned the federal government was rushing the transition.

“The notion that we can have 80 percent renewables by 2030 is [expletive],” he told Ben Fordham’s 2GB radio show on May 4.

“The truth is ... this transition [to renewables], if it ever occurs, it will take 80 years ... not eight.”

However, Broad was also concerned about the federal government making out that the transition could happen quickly when it could not.

“I’m deeply concerned about the rush, the notion that somehow this is all magic. We’re gonna wave a magic wand, we'll close a big baseload power plant that’s kept the lights on for years ... and all these alternatives are out there,” he said.

“Well, it’s not. I can be 100 percent certain it’s not.”

The former renewable energy chief also criticised the government’s lack of planning around the transition lines, which he said was a problem that needed to be addressed as there are currently few available forms of power lines to get the energy made by renewable projects to the power plants.

“The lack of transmission is going to be a big big problem for us,” he said.

“So the notion you can have all this occurring without transmission, all the other forms of investment which will cost the consumer a lot. Suggesting you can do all that and the price is going to come down is wrong. It’s misleading.”