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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-03-07 Daily Xml
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Hydrogen Power Station

Mr PATTERSON (Morphett) (15:12): The Premier travelled to the Upper Spencer Gulf last week, where, amongst his announcements, he confirmed another broken promise by the Malinauskas Labor government regarding their $600 million experimental hydrogen power station that Labor themselves have admitted is not aimed at delivering cheaper electricity bills for struggling South Australian households. After his trip, South Australians now know not to trust anything he or his ministers say around cost of living, because he thinks when politicians talk about reducing living costs, and I quote, 'nine times out of 10 it's all BS'.

South Australians are also starting to understand it is not just cost-of-living commentary from the Premier that is 90 per cent BS; it is also his election promises, his promise to fix ramping. Let's talk about his hydrogen power station promises. Before the election, Labor's policy document clearly stated, 'Labor will build a new 200MW Combined Cycle Turbine'. Combined cycle turbines are used to provide base load power, something that intermittent wind and solar cannot. Fast forward to last week and the Premier has given up on his promise to construct a combined cycle turbine, instead opting for a LM6000 aeroderivative open-cycle turbine, effectively a jet engine that usually hangs off the wing of a plane.

I pointed out that this broken promise of a base load generator was likely over a year ago, when the government released their request for proposals in late 2022, and the Premier has now confirmed this. You have to ask why. Maybe because the last combined cycle turbine was commissioned in South Australia over 20 years ago, because they just do not have the flexibility to effectively operate in a system where wind and solar at times are producing energy all the time. Or was the promise broken because combined cycle turbines are much more expensive and would have blown the $600 million budget to bits?

Regardless, this was obviously a BS promise that removes a base load generator for a peaking plant and therefore fundamentally changes the nature of this project. This has major implications for industry in South Australia, who thought they were getting a base load generator. Instead, they are getting a power station that might run for an hour or two in the late afternoon, after work, when people are actually getting home from work.

We also know that this is not the only promise to be broken in regard to the hydrogen power station. Labor have previously dropped their promise of 3,600 tonnes of hydrogen storage and also the promise that it was liquefied hydrogen storage. That was in order to avoid a massive cost blowout in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Instead, they are aiming for 100 tonnes of gaseous storage.

Remember, Labor claimed the cost for this 3,600 tonnes of liquefied hydrogen storage would cost $31 million, but expert advice from the CSIRO has shown that that much liquefied storage would cost north of $310 million. As a result, the project has had a drastic cut in storage and with not enough fuel to run as base load for long periods the Premier's BS promise of a combined cycle turbine is now some jet engines. These are two broken promises of four of the main pillars of their hydrogen plan and it begs the question: what other promises will be broken and fall into the BS category?

Just like the cheat that food companies make by reducing the size of the chocolate bar to keep the cost down, this government keeps changing the nature and the scope of what was promised to South Australians prior to the state election, promised three years ago, before the massive jumps in construction costs and inflation that have occurred in the last two years, to try to keep within their phony $593 million budget.

The Premier is hoping that no-one notices his promises were BS as he spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising that largely relies on projects initiated under the former Liberal government and that I was involved in as minister for trade and investment, such as the Northern Water Project, which is looking to unlock enormous opportunity in Spencer Gulf and mining projects in the Gawler Craton. The possibilities at Cape Hardy and the $140 million Port Bonython hydrogen hub that the former Liberal government committed $40 million to, all to cover up the Malinauskas Labor government spending $600 million—and it could be more, hundreds of millions of dollars more—on an experimental hydrogen power station that is not aimed at delivering cheaper electricity bills for struggling South Australian households.

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