Anthony Albanese supports $12bn Pioneer-Burdekin pumped hydro scheme
The prime minister’s support for the mammoth renewable energy project comes just one day after the release of a crucial design tender.
Business
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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has confirmed his backing for the state government’s proposed $12bn pumped hydro project in the Pioneer Valley.
“Yeah, very much,” he said when asked if he supported the scheme on a whirlwind tour to Mackay.
“I think the state government has outlined quite a visionary program and I look forward to having further discussions with the state government about how the federal government can support them.”
The 5GW “battery of the north” announced by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk in 2022 serves as a linchpin for a broader $62bn plan to reconfigure the state’s energy system and move it onto a renewables base.
The scheme links two upper reservoirs in the Valley with a lower reservoir at Netherdale and if constructed, would store and dispatch half of the state’s energy needs with renewable energy by 2035.
Pioneer Valley residents, some of whom are set to lose their properties to make way for the project, have reacted with fury to the announcement.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has also come out against the project, labelling it a “pipe dream”.
But Energy Minister Mick de Brenni, speaking with Mackay business leaders in October, expressed confidence the scheme would go ahead with federal support.
“It is great to have an Australian government that believes in climate science,” he said.
Mr De Brenni said the scheme and larger energy plan were designed to inoculate businesses from global price shocks while addressing climate change concerns.
“(The plan will) Decouple our state, the businesses, those big electricity users, from those global price shocks, we need to move to a fuel system that is based on fuel that Queenslanders own and one that is low emissions as well,” he said.
Mr Albanese’s remarks come one day after Queensland Hydro, the entity charged with delivering the project, announced an expression-of-interest tender for “front-end engineering design”.
The design will drill into the technical requirements of the project and help Queensland Hydro reassess cost.
The tender documents outline a massive scope of required work, with calls for a range of options and then a preferred option.
In the preferred option phase, the tenderer must deliver designs for all major components, including the dams and spillway, reservoirs, access and service tunnels, power station civil works, transmission interface point and access roads.
The tender document also states the selected company must undertake a “failure impact assessment for the upper and lower dams including dam break assessment and flood mapping” and “a road realignment design for the affected section of the Mackay Eungella Road”.
The tender closes on January 31 with the winner announced on April 7.
Queensland Hydro wants the final design report to be submitted on December 22, 2023.
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