Multiple gigawatts of potential wind and solar projects face an increasingly uncertain future, with some proposals evaporating altogether if the key VNI West transmission link is scrapped.
The echoes of cancelling the project – one of the key policy plans of the both One Nation and the Coalition in the lead-up to the November state election – will also felt in New South Wales and even in communities in eastern Victoria such as Eildon, whose power line is getting an upgrade as part of the VNI West works.
The scale of the projects at stake, unveiled below and which a range of industry and regulatory figures agree look “sensible,” highlight the risk that the Coalition and One Nation are taking with their plans to dump the controversial 500 kilovolt (kV) project.
VNI West has been criticised by some local groups, and has been dismissed as unnecessary by some energy analysts. Others, though, argue it is essential and it forms a key part of the Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan, the multi-decade blueprint for the green energy transition.
It has now become a proxy for the ideological war that has now erupted over the switch from coal to renewables, underpinned by the extraordinary scenes last weekend when opponents, led by leading One Nation politicians, burned effigies of renewable infrastructure at a protest.
