Snowy 2.0 blows out 20 times to $42b — we could have built 4 nuclear plants instead. By Joanne Nova.
Snowy 2.0 will stand as a monument to organized crime.
Big Government is the ultimate racket. The costs have been hidden, the FOIs denied, the Unions are raking in the cash, and a foreign corporation is soaking in easy money. And in the end, the stored power is likely to be a horrible $200/kWh, making it 6 times the price of brown coal plant power.
Malcolm Turnbull promised us it would cost $2b and take four years, and here we are, nine years later, with just $40 billion and three more years to go….
There is something in this project for every grifter.
- The incompetent management delays have added $8b in interest during construction. That will keep the Bankers happy.
- There are 3,000 extra workers nobody thought we’d need and they earn $250,000 each on average.
- And there is now $12 billion in interconnector high-voltage line costs. Like all “renewable” projects, the fuel is free but the cost to collect and distribute it burns like a magnesium flare. …
Snowy 2.0 is managed by Webuild, an Italian construction company that is the common thread in a string of Australian infrastructure projects facing multibillion-dollar cost blowouts.
The cost is now $1,500 per man, woman and child in the country. It’s like the government demanded every family of four pay $6,000 for something that doesn’t generate electricity, it just stores what wind and solar power make at the wrong time, so we can convert a useless product into something less useless.
This is pure subsidy money to wind and solar power. Each renewable project should be charged the fees to cover this, then see what the hourly charge for unreliable power really is.
One of Webuild’s delays was so that they could get worker accommodation built in Italy and sent to Australia. Because the Australian economy is not built around remote mining camps, right?
Four nuclear plants for the same price!
Or we could have built four nuclear plants, South Korean style, and got 5GW of actual generation, with production of 40TWh a year. That’s 100 times as much energy, available when we need it.
The big downside of course is that it’s a horror show for renewable investors and all the daft politicians who said wind and solar were “cheap”.
Shhh, keep it a secret:
Responsible Members of Parliament clearly have a duty to keep these obscene costs a secret … Clearly releasing the truth suddenly would demoralize the nation, increasing rates of depression and suicide if people knew how crooked and inept our government really is. This is secrecy in the interests of public mental health.
Then there is the matter of commercial sensitivity. The last thing we want rival infrastructure firms to know is how easy it is to screw absurd amounts of money out of Australia. They will all raise their quotes.
If word got out that budgets are flexible, deadlines optional, and overruns practically a revenue stream, every bidder would adjust accordingly. Australia will never get a reasonable tender again.
Naturally national security is also at stake. If adversaries learned how effectively a single project can inflate costs and strain the grid, they might attempt to replicate the model. Why sabotage infrastructure when you can simply commission it? Though in fairness, it’s hard to imagine how foreign spies could make the situation worse than the Labor party already has.
Tansy Harcourt in The Australian:
The true cost of Snowy Hydro 2.0 has spiralled to $42bn and should be the subject of a Royal Commission into “one of the biggest disasters” in Australian infrastructure, economist Bruce Mountain and energy executive Ted Woodley said.
By the time all associated infrastructure and financing costs were priced in, Dr Mountain said the bill was 20-times higher than former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull first promised. …
Webuild operates under a controversial cost-plus margin contract. Based on industry standards, that probably means it gets $1.20 for every $1 it spends, creating a perverse incentive to go big.
“That’s a wonderful business to have, isn’t it?” said a former insider….
Webuild has faced severe criticism for basic competency failures that plagued the project from the outset. …
“From day one, they were a complete bloody disaster,” the former insider said.
Yet the Anti-Australia Institute — self-appointed champions against “corporate greed” and “super profits” — remains completely silent. …
They only hunt “profiteering” when it suits their Climate Industrial Complex paymasters.
When an Italian multinational is vacuuming up billions from Australian taxpayers on a failing green project, suddenly the outrage machine switches off.
The Renewables Barons are taking us all for a ride — a very expensive ride.