Former Snowy 2.0 Boss slams Bowen’s Wind and Solar plan: “Bull***t”

Former Snowy 2.0 boss Paul Broad has just SLAMMED Bowen’s ‘transition to renewables’, calling it ‘bull***t’.

“The notion that you can have 80% renewable in our system by 2030 is, to use the vernacular, bull***t. The truth is, this transition, if it ever occurs, will take 80 years, not eight.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself, Paul.

Transcript

Ben: 17 minutes after 7:00. Well, we’ve said this line a number of times, don’t jump off the boat until you’ve reached the shore, and we say it about Australia’s dramatic switch to renewable energy. We’re switching off coal at rapid rates. The backup plan isn’t ready to go just yet. Take the massive hydro energy project, Snowy 2.0. It’s long been promised to store enough energy for 3 million homes. The project is disastrously delayed and over budget. The former prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said in 2017 it would be up and running by 2021. Now they’re saying 2029. It’s gone from a $2 billion price tag to 10 billion, including all of the linked transmission lines.

I wanted to have a chat to someone who knows about this backwards. His name is Paul Broad. He’s one of Australia’s leading experts on infrastructure. Now, Paul Broad was the CEO of Snowy 2.0 for a decade, but his tenure ended shortly after Chris Bowen became the federal energy minister. Paul Broad delivered Mr. Bowen some home truths about how the project was going. He was sent packing shortly after, or maybe he decided to leave. Paul Broad, the former boss of Snowy 2.0 is on the line. Paul, thanks for joining us.

Paul Broad: Thanks. My pleasure, Ben.

Ben: Did you leave or were you shoved?

Paul Broad: Oh, a bit of combination. The word was filtering down. In fact, I think when Bowen was elected, I was dead in the water, so it was only a matter of time. But I formally resigned.

Ben: Why were you dead in the water? What was it that was such a sticking point between where you stand and where Chris Bowen stood?

Paul Broad: Oh, a series of things, particularly the gas plant at Kurri Kurri, Angus Taylor and I were very strong that you needed gas to keep the lights on. And we had more gas in New South Wales than we know what to do with. We need gas. So when the sun’s not shining, wind’s not blowing, gas, hydro are incredibly important. And Chris Bowen was against Kurri Kurri. Then he said we’re going to run Kurri Kurri 30% on hydrogen. There is no hydrogen in the Hunter, and there won’t be for another 10, 20 years at the earliest.

Ben: You were just trying to help, right?

Paul Broad: Well, yeah, trying to help. I think in the 18 months leading up to it, in the senate estimate, the parliament asking us lots of these sort of questions. So you got a sense of where Chris was coming from, and that’s his political view. I respect that, I just didn’t agree with it and there’s no point being somewhere if you don’t agree with it.

Ben: You could have just drunk the Kool-Aid and said, “Oh yeah. No, this is going to be the answer to all of our problems. It’ll be able to carry the load.” But you were being realistic and he didn’t want to hear it?

Paul Broad: Yeah. Plus the fact, the notion that you can have 80% renewable in our system by 2030 is, to use the vernacular, is bullshit. It’s bullshit. Ben, the truth is, this transition, if it ever occurs, it will take 80 years, not eight. So there’s massive changes need to occur. And I’m deeply concerned about the rush, the notion that somehow this is all magic, I’m going to wave a magic wand, we’ll close a big baseload power plant that’s kept our lights on for yours of my life, we’re just going to close it and there’s all these alternatives out there. Well, it’s not. I can be absolutely 100% certain it’s not available, and the transmission lines are miles late. 2.0, which is a part of the thing is late. I think their own reports tell them you’ll need at least eight 2.0s to achieve their goal, and that’s 80 years not eight.

Ben: Let’s just have a look at 2.0. So the biggest issue is these giant tunnelling machines. They weigh 2000 tonnes. They keep falling through the soft ground. Do we know how far along this project is? Is it halfway? Beyond halfway?

Paul Broad: Yeah. Look, I’ve got to defend 2.0, it was a huge part of my creation, and I’m quite proud of the attempt to build a big pumped hydro, but it’s complex. These tunnel-boring machines have got to do through heaps of rock. There’s 28 kilometres of tunnels, 11 metres diameter. And one of them has got to actually bore uphill. So they’ve got to come in and get access to a cabin, and then you’ve got to drill out a cabin, which is 400 metres long, a kilometre under the mountain. So the complexity of this thing is enormous. So I’m not surprised that we’ve got delays. I suppose what worries me more is the lack of transmission.

So you have this big power plant, it’s of no use to you if you haven’t got a transmission line out the front to run it into where the people are. So the lack of transmission is going to be a big, big problem for us. The lack of transmission to bring all these renewables. The power plants we have are just up the road here in the Hunter, all these new renewables are out west or somewhere else. There’s no power lines to get it here. So the notion you can have all this occurring without transmission and all the other investment which will cost the customer, the consumers a lot, the suggestion you can do all that and price is going to come down. It’s just wrong. It’s absolutely wrong. It’s misleading, it’s false and to keep suggesting that, I think eventually, eventually the average punter wakes up, and there’ll be a reaction.

Ben: We’re listening to Paul Broad, the former of boss of Snowy 2.0. Just on the timeline, I actually had a meeting with someone who’s associated with the project about a month or so ago. And I said, “What’s going on with this thing? Because we were told it’d be done by 2021, and now you’re talking about 2027.” And then they said to me, “Oh, it might be late 2027.” And I said, “Well, that sounds to me like 2028.” Now they’re saying December 2029. When I hear December 2029, I think 2030. Realistically, when’s it going to be done?

Paul Broad: Well, the transmission line is ’27, so I suspect they’ll get first power, I suspect… Now something else will happen. I think the challenges for building it are still in front of them. The biggest challenge they have for this whole project is still to come. So there’s lots of risk with it yet, but I suspect, given the fudges the engineers do, I’m suspecting end of ’27, middle of ’27, that sort of timeframe. But Ben, there’s no point having it if the transmission line… So we’ve got to work out, someone’s got to tell us when are the farmers going to agree to run power lines over their properties? When are they going to agree to pay the farmers a reasonable annual sum to access and run their lines over their property? When all that’s agreed and they work out the direction these things are going to come… We haven’t upgraded them in 50 years, let alone in five.

Ben: We’ve spoken to some of those farmers and they’re worried because they say they’ve got to knock down all of these trees to put the lines in. We’re worried about bush fires. And the other issue is just that old line, “It’s my land, it’s my property.”

Paul Broad: Absolutely. Then well what happened, the truth of it, they had all these shiny asses from Sydney rock up to the farms and say, “I’m going to put a power line over your property.” Well, the farmers said, “Get lost. You’re not coming on my property.” It is their livelihood. It is what they live for. So they got off to a really bad start. All the people around Tumut and Gundagai, all those people are now up in arms because these things have got to be done right. You’ve got to sit down and you’ve got to be able to be flexible about the direction you go to minimise the impact on farmers. They had some power lines going right over the farmer’s house.

So there’s still a lot of work to be done on the transmission. There’s still a lot of work to be done on 2.0. And the reports out saying you’re going to need lots of 2.0. So it’s really just the start of the journey. It’s not the end and I think the notion that we can close these plants, no, Eraring can’t, cannot close. Even now, we’re closing Liddell. We’re on a knife’s edge. You watch when it gets really hot or really cold, just how tight it gets in New South Wales. If the lights don’t go out, I’ll be awfully surprised.

Ben: A couple of quick ones, one of the private contractors went into administration in December. We’ve heard there are still unpaid bills to both workers and to ongoing construction.

Paul Broad: Yeah, the contractor’s got a lot to answer for. And I don’t want to go on air and bag a contractor, but they’ve got a lot to answer for. And I think they were trying games by not paying the local small contractors, and as soon I was there, I was prepared to go and pay the contractors ourselves, and then extract it from the big contractor later. The major contractor has safety problems. They tragically lost a life down there a week or so ago. The contractor has a lot of questions to answer. They’re under a fixed-price contract, so these prices shouldn’t be going up, but they are. They’re on a performance-based contract, they’re not performing. There is some big question marks and Clough going broke halfway as well, 12 months ago, it’s been a big problem. The Clough guys were integral part of delivering it. So the contractor has a huge challenge in front of them and they’ve got huge questions to answer.

Ben: Just on question marks, were you hiding some of the delays from Chris Bowen? Because I’ve seen the Financial Review. A spokeswoman for Mr. Bowen told the Financial Review that, “It was no secret that the government was disappointed in the hiding of delays to major energy projects by the former government including Snowy Hydro 2.0.”

Paul Broad: That is just bullshit. The first meeting with Bowen, my first meeting with Bowen, he asked me and I said, “Yeah, 12 to 18 months.” When I was with last meeting with Angus, which was back in April when the contractor rocked into Angus’s office and said that, “We think you’re going to be delaying going [inaudible 00:09:41] cost increase,” Angus kicked him out of the office and said, “It’s got to be delivered on time and on budget.” That’s the truth. I mean why does his office on this political spin? What is he trying to do? Fair dinkum. Why not just tell the truth? It’s really easy. In life, I find if you tell the truth, you can remember it and you don’t get yourself in too much trouble.

Ben: I said at the start of my introduction, that line that a talk back caller said to me once about the switch to renewables, “Don’t jump off the boat until you’ve reached the shore.” Can you reflect on that for a moment before we say goodbye?

Paul Broad: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. We can’t make this transition until we’re absolutely convinced that the alternative’s going to work, and is going to be at a price point that it won’t kill the economy. At the moment, we’ve got neither of those.

Ben: You say the idea of getting to 80% renewables by 2030 is complete BS. You say closer to 80 years?

Paul Broad: Yeah. Well, you got to build these things. Transmission lines, their own reports say you’ll need eight 2.0s or their equivalents. One 2.0 takes 10 years, so get eight. I could do my maths, it’s got to be 80, 70, so it’ll be another generation before anything like what they’re talking about occurs.

Ben: We know it’s never too late to learn a lesson. What would you say to Chris Bowen if he’s listening this morning?

Paul Broad: Oh, take a big deep breath. You’re a minister now, you’ve got responsibilities. You got to put it all on the line and you got to be honest to everybody about it.

Ben: We really appreciate you coming on the line. You haven’t mucked about, you’re pulling no punches this morning, and we appreciate that, Paul.

Paul Broad: Thanks, Ben.

Ben: Paul Broad, the former boss of Snowy 2.0 and I can only imagine the reaction in Chris Bowen’s office right now. They won’t be liking what they’re hearing, but it sounds to me like he’s just given a unfiltered view of Snowy 2.0, and also the transition to renewables. And you heard what he said about the government’s targets, BS. And he didn’t put it the way I just put it then. He’s also weighed into the other issue, which is just so obvious, about needing to keep our major coal plant open. That is something that Chris Minns entertained during the election campaign, and thankfully since winning the election, he suggested that that is a must, that he’s got to work out how we can keep the supply going and keep the prices low. And the discussions are underway with the operators.