Australia’s biggest renewable energy project, the “Snowy 2.0” hydro scheme in New South Wales, is now expected to cost up to A$25 billion – more than 12 times the original figure, an official new report has confirmed.

Snowy 2.0 also won’t be completed until late 2029. This is eight years after the initial projection announced by then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2017. Its anticipated price tag was just $2 billion then, though there was no business case to back that up at the time.

This latest news about Snowy 2.0 should be raising red flags not just about this project, but the likelihood of rising costs for other multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects, such as the national $93 billion High Speed Rail project and Melbourne’s Suburban Rail Loop.

What this latest report reveals

Snowy 2.0 is intended to work like a giant battery, using renewable electricity to pump water from one dam to another higher one in the Snowy Mountains, then releasing it back down to generate electricity when demand is high.

Once completed, it will be able to generate up to 2,200 megawatts of power, the equivalent of about 26 million household batteries: enough to power three million homes for a week.

As recently as three years ago, its price tag was revised up from $6 billion to $12 billion. Yet this latest report shows that the $12 billion estimate was based on incomplete construction designs.

The federal........

© The Conversation