Australia’s already spent billions on Snowy Hydro 2.0 – but this energy expert claims the massive project will never produce one watt of power

An energy expert has cast doubt on the commercial viability of the multi-billion dollar Snowy 2.0 project.

Alan Lawrenson claims the project won’t generate a megawatt of power. 

‘I don’t think it’ll make a good commercial return, and in fact there is a chance that it might not ever be completed,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.

‘I’d love to be proved wrong, but that’s my consensus at this time.’

Mr Lawrenson is an author on energy issues who formerly worked in scientific fields and is an investor in the mining, oil and gas industries. 

He said he was at a mining conference recently and the general consensus among  energy experts is that the Snowy 2.0 project is potentially doomed.

‘They are very dubious about the outcome, and certainly there won’t be a commercial return, a positive commercial return out of the project, should it be completed.’

The controversial project which aims to dig the 15km journey below Kosciuszko National Park, was announced by then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2017 with construction commencing in 2019.

It stalled last year when a $150m 400-tonne boring machine, called Florence, became stuck. 

‘It took some months to extricate itself and so forth. It’s been going roughly a year at this stage, and it’s done 800metres now and it’s got 16kilometres to go,’ Mr Lawrenson claimed. 

Mr Lawrenson said he believes the cost of Snowy 2.0 will blow out even further.

‘When you’re spending $13billion of taxpayer’s money, by the time the thing’s finished, I think it will be more than $13billion because these projects have a way of soaking up money.

‘I’ve spoken to geologists and they said that the boring machine is going through some of the hardest rock in Australia, and the progress it will make will be very slow and of course, lack of progress means extra cost.’

Mr Lawrenson compared the original Snowy Mountains Scheme that opened in 1972 to Snowy 2.0.

‘The Snowy One project is one of the great engineering feats of the world, and one can only commend that particular project and how it’s been added to and supplemented and maintained.’

He said compared with Snowy 2.0, the original scheme is outstanding because it was designed by engineers, ‘without much ideological bent in the decision making process’.

Mr Lawrenson believes a major problem with Snowy 2.0 is that it was ‘an ideological play in the first place, rather than a hard-nosed business decision to invest in important infrastructure’.

On alternatives to the troubled Snowy 2.0 project, Mr Lawrenson said: ‘There are two possible ways out of this jam we’re in right now. One is to build two HELE (High Efficiency, Low Emissions) coal fired power stations, one in Queensland and one in Victoria or New South Wales border.’

He said the cost would be around $4billion Australian dollars per gigawatt of output, and he claims that would ‘take the pressure off everywhere’.

‘The cost of power generated is very low, and the pollution, the amount of C02, in the overall sense that goes out into the atmosphere is no more than perhaps equivalent energy sources.’ 

Mr Lawrenson said another alternative is nuclear power.  

‘Make an early commitment to small modular reactors, and you site them at the point of coal-fired power stations that are closed down, because you’ve already got the distribution infrastructure in place.’