Labor loses its spine on renewables as premier throws new energy minister, and transition, under the bus

In the annals of bold and courageous leadership, the last seven days are unlikely to rate an honourable mention for Victorian Labor.

With just a couple of months left until voters head to the polls, the Carroll government appears to have dismantled its own spine and, with it, one of the party’s few intact policy legacies – an ambitious transition to renewable energy and meaningful action on climate change.

Much of this dismantling was done in the space of just one day where, one minute, new state energy minister Jacyln Symes was telling energy industry stakeholders that the party would stay the course on efforts to meet the state’s legislated target of 65 per cent renewables by 2030.

The next minute, her boss was slamming on the brakes and throwing the energy policy bus into reverse.

“The most important way we can provide certainty for investors is by laying out a clear vision for transmission lines and renewable energy zones in the Victorian Transmission Plan,” Symes told the Committee for Economic Development Australia (CEDA) forum on Victorian energy security on Tuesday.

“Of course, this is where the choices become stark,” Symes continued, in her first formal address as energy minister. “Western Renewables Link and VNI West are central to this government’s plans to keep the lights on and bills down, and they have been central to national planning for over a decade.”

Less than an hour later, however, journalist inboxes buzzed with the news that the Western Renewables Link (WRL) – which had only just earned a green tick from planning minister Sonja Kilkenny the night before – would undergo a new economic reassessment, under direct orders from premier Ben Carroll.

“This project was planned almost 10 years ago and Victorian consumers deserve updated, transparent costings,” Carroll said of the “immediate, independent” review, the findings of which he says will be made public by the end of the year – crucially, post-election.

“As it moves along this considered process, Minister Jaclyn Symes has spoken with VicGrid and can reassure the community that no compulsory acquisitions will occur during this time,” Carroll said.

“If we can save money on the costs of building, we can help reduce the cost of living.”

The Western Renewables Link is a 190 km 500 kV overhead high-voltage electricity transmission line that will carry renewable energy from near Bulgana in western Victoria to Sydenham in Melbourne’s north-west.

The fresh delay to its already very slow progress plays into the narrative that major transmission projects like WRL and VNI West – the latter of which both the state Coalition and One Nation parties have pledged to scrap if they win the election – have no social licence and that Labor is “finally listening” to the people – as the Labor MP for the marginal seat of Ripon rather astonishingly put it.

But not everyone is plying this line, least of all Symes, who just 24 hours ago stressed that certainty was critical for the state to continue to provide reliable and affordable power over the coming decade as Victoria’s coal plants, starting with Yallourn in 2028, exit the system.

“Equivocating scares the market,” Symes told the CED event. “Sends projects onto the scrap heap. Certainty is something that is incumbent on governments to be very consistent about.”

RE-Alliance, an independent not-for-profit dedicated to ensuring the shift to renewables benefits the regions and its people, says the back-down on WRL is the very last message rural communities needed to hear from the government on a project it says should have already been completed.

Tony Goodfellow, policy and engagement manager at RE-Alliance, says the WRL about-face looks more like a reaction to the “reckless positions” from the opposition and One Nation than sound leadership.

“Western Renewables Link is a long-established project that’s been studied, consulted on and planned over many years. It will connect new energy projects to keep the lights on in Victoria,” says Goodfellow.

“Communities across western Victoria have been asked to participate in that process and prepare for the changes and opportunities it will bring. They should not now be thrown back into uncertainty because the politics has become difficult in Melbourne.

“RE-Alliance has consistently called for better consultation, fair treatment of affected landholders and stronger benefits for host communities. But those legitimate concerns will not be resolved by another delay. They will be resolved by delivering the project properly, with communities at the table.

“The answer to the reckless positions of One Nation and Liberal Party is not … to signal a project slowdown,” he told Renew Economy on Wednesday. “That’s not not leadership.”

Goodfellow points to the recent report from Nexa Advisory – a point of discussion at Tuesday’s CEDA luncheon – that shows the WRL should actually have been completed by now and that delays are driving cost increases.

“[It] should have been built a year ago,” Goodfellow says. “Part of the reason why the costs of the project are increasing is because it’s continually being delayed, and the more it’s delayed … the more costs we’ll pay. So there’s a need to start getting these transmission lines built.

“Yallourn is scheduled to close in mid-2028 and even on its current timeline, the Western Renewables Link is not expected to be ready until 2029. Victoria does not have time to keep reopening decisions that have been years in the making.

“Stable energy policy matters. Regional communities, farmers and businesses need governments to follow through on long-term plans – not compete over who can create the most uncertainty.”

Environment Victoria, too, was scathing about the WRL announcement.

“Minister Symes is correct,” said Environment Victoria CEO Jono La Nauze in a statement issued on Tuesday afternoon. “Without transmission you don’t have wind and solar. Without wind and solar you don’t have affordable power and you can’t keep the lights on. It’s as simple as that.

“Our coal power stations are coming to the end of their life and no matter what we do, we have to replace them. The cheapest option is clean, reliable wind and solar.

“Independent experts Nexa Advisory have found it would cost Victorians $33 billion if we delay building new wind, solar, storage and transmission lines,” La Nauze says. 
 
“That’s a cost of $472 to a typical household, $4,719 to a small business and $11,797 for a large business – and the cost is even higher if these projects are cancelled.” 

Then there are the costs to the regions of not going ahead with projects like WRL and VNI, which as well offering landholders lucrative payments to host transmission towers are setting up major community benefits schemes that promise to help solve some of the long-standing problems faced by rural communities, including mobile phone black-spots and pothole-ridden roads.

In July, AusNet – which has been contracted by VicGrid to deliver WRL – reported that almost 200 community groups and local volunteer-led organisations across western Victoria had applied for a share in $4 million of local grants as part of the WRL Benefit Sharing Program.

This multi-million dollar community investment is designed to directly respond to the challenges of those living in the areas most affected by the proposed transmission line.

Applications for up to $300,000 in funding were received from all seven eligible local government areas along the proposed project route, mostly targeting community infrastructure, and funding will be delivered regardless of whether the WRL project proceeds to construction, AusNet says.

Stephanie Bashir, who is the principal and founder of Nexa, on Tuesday told the CEDA conference that there is another side to the debate around costs, that extends beyond the price of transmission versus the price of gas, and which will push up power bills further.

“I was at the national regional summit [on Monday] in Canberra,” Bashir told the CEDA event on Tuesday. “And there is another angle to all of this.

“There is misinformation being spread across the regions, there [are] actually campaigns going on to delay renewables, to delay transmission, and it is purposeful campaigns to do that.

“And we can’t turn [away and pretend] … that those things are not happening. We should be calling them out, because they are actually creating a lot of delays and making projects very, very expensive, and making the developers work a lot harder and creating a lot of unnecessary cost.”

Goodfellow agrees.

“There’s been a lot of studies done in the [Renewable Energy Zones], including transmission regions, that showed that the people against the projects are a vocal minority,” he told Renew Economy on Wednesday.

“I wouldn’t say that this project doesn’t have social license. But, you know, leaders not not showing leadership on the project and explaining why it’s needed isn’t helping.

“It signals to like farmers and regional communities that this is not a necessary project, [that] it’s not critical, which it which is not the case.”

Certainly, the build-out of huge new transmission corridors has its opponents – both from within regional communities and from the ranks of academia, including energy scholar and Australian industry expert Bruce Mountain, whose proposed Plan B for VNI West has more or less been adopted as state Coalition policy.

And the costs of the project have indeed blown out – although by how much, exactly, is also disputed. What started in 2019 with a budget of $370 million has evolved into a much bigger project – including major design changes requiring a 500kV upgrade – with a price tag now estimated at more than $1 billion. Mountain suggests it’s more like $4.2 billion.

It should also be noted that none of the Coalition or One Nation party policies for energy have been properly costed, nor do they adequately explain how they will meet Victoria’s energy needs without sweating old, unreliable coal assets.

What cannot be disputed is that VNI West and WRL are two projects that Victorian Labor backed in and pledged to build, in line with modelling from the Australian Energy Market Operator, and in mind of the race to support enough new renewable energy capacity to replace outgoing coal, meet VRET targets and fight climate change.

And, to quote a truism from shadow energy minister of Victoria David Davis’s own florid and antagonistic address to CEDA on Tuesday: “The delay on Western Renewables is [Labor’s] fault.”

Now – as voters weigh up which policies to support and as international investors weigh up where to put their money – is not the time to activate the ejector seat.

“As coal generation is coming to the end of its life, there needs to be new transmission,” says Goodfellow. “It’s needed to get energy from where it’s generated, wind and solar, to farmers, factories, and households.

“AEMO showed that the lowest cost transition in the [Integrated System Plan] is that there’s a need for both small and large generation as well as transmission. So that’s just context, you know, [that] sometimes I feel is needed.

“There have been other ideas proposed instead of WRL, but they were they were assessed by VicGrid – independent assessment with public money being spent on those assessments – that showed that the Western Renewables Link and VNI West were in the public interest and are the best option that we have.

“The public should trust that we desperately need critical infrastructure like this to be built because very soon Yallourn will be switched off – it’s very, very important that it’s built – and it’s in the public interest.”

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