Failure to deliver the plan for our energy future is a plan to fail

Energy Shadow Minister Dr Steve Thomas has slammed the Minister for Energy AmberJade Sanderson for failing to deliver the State’s plan for energy as promised, and for then attempting to cover up that failure and keeping it secret.

Dr Thomas said the state was already years behind the required schedule of works to deliver its proposed energy transition, which includes a promise to retire all coal-fired power stations by 2030.

“If WA really wants to get off coal before 2030, the Government needed to have their Whole of System Plan in place now because it will take years to build the needed transmission lines and years more to build the windfarms the Government thinks will power the future,” he said.

“They released the South West Interconnected System (SWIS) Transmission Plan last month before this important Whole of System Plan – now delayed to 2027 – which makes no sense.

“It’s like starting to build your house before the plans are completed; the foundations are likely to be wrong, but you don’t know how bad it is until you try building the roof.”

The State Government had flagged that the Whole of System Plan – the blueprint for the development of the State’s largest electricity grid, the SWIS – would be released by the end of this year.

The Whole of System Plan was first delivered in 2020 but due to massive changes planned for the energy system, it quickly became outdated, resulting in a promise from the State Government to update it in 2023.

“But that promise was broken when the Cook Government returned to the legislated timeframe of a five-year review, which meant the plan was due this year,” he said.

“Now that promise has also been broken, with the Minister publishing changes in the Government Gazette to give herself and her department two more years to deliver this important planning document.

“The Minister for Energy Amber-Jade Sanderson kept the Synergy billing debacle a secret and has now tried to keep her energy planning failure a secret.

“It is now not due until the end of September 2027 and won’t be presented much before then, so we will be well over halfway through the transition of the plan that is supposed to be delivered