Energy Policy WA announces new name for a plan due a year ago

The failure of Energy Policy WA (EPWA) to deliver the Whole of System Plan as required by September 2025 cannot be hidden by their announcement yesterday of a consultation process for a new plan with a new name.

Shadow Energy Minister Dr Steve Thomas said EPWA failed both the Government and the people of Western Australia when the Whole of System Plan that was due by the end of September last year was put off for two years.

“That meant that the transition plan for WA would not be delivered until five years into the seven-year transition process,” he said.

“Yesterday EPWA announced a new planning process they are calling the “Future Energy System Outlook” (FESO), which appears to be a replacement for the Whole of System Plan they failed to deliver.

“It is so hard to tell the difference between the processes that it appears to me they are effectively the same plan with a different name.

According to the Whole of System Plan website “Whole of System Planning provides an informed view on what Western Australia’s principal electricity system, the South West Interconnected System (SWIS), might look like over the coming decades.”

The FESO is, according to the EPWA statement, ‘a long-term planning exercise for the development of Western Australia’s main electricity network, the South West Interconnected System (SWIS)’.

“What on earth is the difference? This is surely just rebadging a process that has already failed to deliver once to try to hide that previous failure,” Dr Thomas said.

“Last week I said in a media release that a new and improved energy plan was needed and the Government cannot wait years to deliver it.

“It looks like EPWA read that release and announced a consultation process for a new plan with a new name, but they need to explain how this is different to the Whole of System Plan fiasco. And whether either the Whole of System Plan or the Future Energy System Outlook is the actual plan for energy transition, the report of each is still not due until 2027.

“Frankly I don’t think the state of Western Australia can wait that long.”