The Pioneer-Burdekin Pumped Hydro Project was the centrepiece of the government’s 2022 energy plan to enable the phasing-out of Queensland’s fleet of state-owned coal-fired power stations and transition to a renewables target of 80 per cent, both by 2035. The energy plan was framed as nation-leading action on climate change, and was fuelled by a need to suppress the rise of the Greens, which had just won three seats in Brisbane at the May 2022 federal election, and was on track to increase its two state MPs at this year’s Queensland election.
It was also a wedge for the then-opposition leader David Crisafulli and his Liberal National Party, which had long been divided over environmental issues.
Pioneer-Burdekin was the biggest ever proposed hydro energy storage project in the world. Palaszczuk and Miles trumpeted it as the critical piece of infrastructure that would ensure the lights stayed on when the sun wasn’t shining and there was no wind, with 5GW of stored energy from renewables that could feed the grid for 24 hours.
But what later became apparent was that despite the enormous cost of the project – the initial estimate of $12bn rose to between $25bn and $27.67bn (but was kept secret until this week) – it had little more than a press release to back its worth.
A mostly desktop study, only partly released this year, had identified the Pioneer Valley, near Mackay as a possible site for the mega scheme, and also earmarked the Borumba Dam, near Gympie, for a smaller 2GW pumped hydro project – and together, they would deliver 7GW of stored green power.
It then emerged that the government had committed to the Pioneer-Burdekin project without it first undergoing geotechnical survey work, to determine if the required tunnels and reservoirs could actually be dug. That work is still ongoing.
The project was also without any financial modelling.
Palaszczuk, and later Miles, gave assurances it would all stack up when Queensland Hydro – the company set up to deliver the two projects – finished its Detailed Analytical Report by the middle of this year for cabinet to sign off on. But it never happened; the deadline was missed and Miles and his energy minister Mick de Brenni admitted under questioning that the report, and cabinet decision would have to wait until after the October 26 election.
But Labor still campaigned on its energy plan, spruiking Pioneer-Burdekin and attacking Crisafulli for refusing to back it.
Days after the election, Queensland Hydro delivered its report to the new LNP government with the conclusion that the Pioneer-Burdekin plan was “commercially unviable”. Deep in the pages of the report, exclusively obtained by The Australian, was a telling paragraph: “In the absence of the system level analysis demonstrating Queensland’s need for a 5000MW PHES scheme, Reference Option I (the announced Pioneer-Burdekin project) is not considered viable …’’ it reads.
In other words, the former government had never even checked if Pioneer-Burdekin and its vaunted capacity was needed to meet future demand on the grid. Lights out on the mirage.
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Annastacia Palaszczuk, Steven Miles and the rest of the former Labor government cabinet tried to pull off one of the most expensive, politically driven hoaxes in Queensland’s history.