David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to place on record my eternal thanks to a group of eminently trained engineers who travelled to parliament on 24 and 25 November last year at their own cost, totally pro bono, to put on the most marvellous presentation of data about our energy system and the AEMO plan for the future of the grid, an essential document guiding a massive investment by state and federal governments into the so-called transition to a cleaner, decarbonised energy system. They also had analysed the GenCost report, which has also been used extensively in modelling our so-called transition.

I will just give a brief summary. Basically, these engineers were incredibly well-qualified, internationally trained, Canadian, English and Australian engineers. There was input from American engineers. In fact, we received summaries by one of those engineers, Dave Collins, who'd been to MIT. We saw a summary of the information presented by Professor Jacopo Buongiorno and all the other presenters at a MIT short course—Adi Paterson, Professor Steven Wilson, Robert Barr, Robert Parker, Dave Collins, Tony Irwin, Robert Pritchard, Helen Cook, James Flay, James Taylor and his group of 10 independent engineers and scientists. From the UK, Dr Tim Stone gave us a wonderful presentation and David Carland, a very experienced energy economic analyser, reissued his report.

The take-home message is that the huge transition is not really a transition. I think it's a faulty word because it implies almost an equivalence—that we're just changing how the electricity grid works. The analysis by all these eminent engineers—this was delivered not by me but by them—is that there is inadequate generation and inadequate storage. That is the bottom line. But there are also very big physical problems with a massive expansion of transmission and distribution and a re-working of the whole grid. The amount of pumped hydro would have to be 20 times what is proposed. If you're having batteries being dispatchable backup for a week, which will be required, you might be spending up to $7 trillion cycling energy into and out of batteries, which consumes 20 per cent of the energy you've generated. Half the battery backup is based in people's homes as part of a distributed energy system, and it will be controlled when it's coordinated by artificial intelligence, by smart meters that connect into your batteries of your EV or your house.

The economic cost of this is quite staggering. They mentioned the figures in AEMO's integrated system plan, which is their future plan for the grid. But, really, what it will cost in implicit costs is more than double. By the end of the 2050 period, when most of these renewable assets will be rebuilt because they have a short life span, it'll be at minimum $1.26 trillion—far greater than what AEMO estimates. The transmission losses are assumed to be zero, but interconnectors can consume between eight per cent and 15 per cent of the energy. Each 100 kilometres of transmission, you might lose up to one per cent of your energy. There are plans to go up to 23,000 extra kilometres of transmission—not just the massive interconnectors; the smaller distribution medium- and low-voltage areas will also have to be worked up because it'll have to cope with a two-way system.

It is absolutely mind-boggling that these reports have been taken as absolute bible and haven't been interrogated by competent people. For those on the other side, these documents have formed the basis of the RepuTex modelling you have used for your Rewiring the Nation and re-powering the nation plans. It needs rapid re-assessment on a holistic and urgent basis. (Time expired)

See this speech in context