September 2018:
Only politicians could think it’s a good idea to spend billions of dollars pumping water uphill to generate electricity in a land with enough coal to last 1,000 years. Yet that is exactly what the federal government [Turnbull] is doing.
…
Firstly, the cost. It was originally claimed that the scheme would cost about $2 billion, but Snowy Hydro Limited acknowledged it could be up to $4.5 billion. The final cost would be anyone’s guess.
Source: Daniel Wild, IPA
Turnbull’s colleagues didn’t buy his NEG but now Shorten has adopted it…
“Bill Shorten announces Labor plans to revive National Energy Guarantee ‘even if it’s not the best'”
Source: ABC
This week, Tony Abbott said we should scrap Snowy 2 and build a Coal-fired power station instead:
“Why not coal-fired power? Coal-fired power remains the cheapest form of baseload power”
@TurnbullMalcolm replied on Twitter:
“But it isn’t. Today the cheapest form of new dispatchable or base load energy is renewables plus storage. We are now able to have lower emissions and lower prices but we need to plan it using engineering & economics rather than ideology and innumerate idiocy”
Source: @TurnbullMalcolm on Twitter
Comment: The claim is contingent on the cost of storage and a level playing field (the removal of subsidies), so we went to look for the Snowy 2 feasibility study. This feasibility study cost $29 million.
Please try to find the ‘Commercials’ and ‘Cost estimate’.
