Media release – Nick Duigan, Minister for Energy and Renewables, 5 August 2024
Marinus Link Project Update
The Tasmanian Government welcomes the announcement by Marinus Link Pty Ltd that a new major contract has been signed with Prysmian PowerLink to design, manufacture, supply and installation for Stage 1 of the Marinus Link.
It is a key step towards the delivery of Marinus Link, a central feature of the Government’s 2030 Strong Plan for Tasmania’s Future, will result in lower electricity prices from unlocking new generation both in Tasmania and on the mainland.
Importantly, Marinus will unlock over $1.3 billion in economic activity and 1,400 jobs in Tasmania.
Minister for Energy and Renewables, Nick Duigan, said Marinus Link is expected to create significant employment and economic stimulus in Tasmania during construction phase.
“The Tasmanian Government was comforted by the fact contracts for the cable and converter station have been locked in and the commitment from Marinus Link that the construction schedule, and the expected completion date of 2030, are unchanged,” Minister Duigan said.
“The Marinus Link Pty Ltd Board has also now advised that the Final Investment Decision (FID) is now proposed for May 2025.
“We have always said will only support this project going ahead if the benefits for Tasmania stack up and the best way to ensure a sound decision is made in Tasmania’s interest, is to ensure Marinus Link Pty Ltd presents robust and comprehensive information to enable confidence in a final decision.
As the Tasmanian Government has already committed, a whole-of-state business case will be prepared and released publicly before FID.
Marinus Link Pty Ltd is owned by the Australian, Victorian and Tasmanian governments and is responsible for progressing the Marinus Link interconnector project.
Featured image above courtesy Greg Schecter, licensed via Deed – Attribution 2.0 Generic – Creative Commons.
Media release – Janie Finlay MP, Shadow Minister for Energy, 6 August 2024
Marinus delay further evidence of Liberals’ failure to deliver
The Tasmanian Liberal Government’s failure to deliver is once again on full display, with a delay to the Final Investment Decision on Marinus Link the latest setback to a project they have been talking about for 10 years and still have nothing to show for it.
Hidden half-way down a media release issued yesterday afternoon, Minister for Energy Nick Duigan revealed that the Final Investment Decision (FID) for Marinus is now proposed for May 2025.
The Marinus Link website still states a final investment decision will be made in late 2024.
The Liberals have now been talking about building Marinus for over ten years.
They have not laid any cable or built any additional transmission and have still not made the financial investment decision. They have effectively spent $130 million of taxpayer money over a decade without delivering anything.
Thankfully, the Federal and Victorian governments are now playing a more active role in the project which gives Marinus some chance of being built in the next decade, despite the Tasmanian Liberals’ best efforts to get in the way.
Media release – Clean Energy Tasmania, 6 August 2024
Marinus progress welcomed, more generation still needed
Clean Energy Tasmania is the voice of Tasmania’s renewable sector and has welcomed confirmation that Marinus Link has secured its cable manufacturing slot and will reach a final investment decision in May 2025, but is concerned by the lack of progress on key wind farm initiatives.
CET Chair, Ian Jones, said one of the main reasons why Marinus Link was so important was because it would unlock desperately needed generation in Tasmania.
“Marinus Link will help Tasmania live up to its potential as a renewable energy powerhouse,” Mr Jones said.
“By securing the cable manufacturing and setting out a timeline to reach a final investment decision, the project is progressing.
“What we don’t have is the renewable energy generation to go with it. If the Government really wants to deliver on its energy target of 200 per cent renewable generation by 2030 it is going to need to move much quicker than it has to date.
“We have some of the best renewable energy resources in the world, but generation isn’t keeping up with demand. We desperately need more generation to support our own local needs as well as to help realise the opportunities that Marinus Link represents.
“There’s around $20 billion of projects on the drawing board for Tasmania and it’s time the Government pulled out all the stops to make our renewable energy future a reality.”
Ben Marshall
August 7, 2024 at 09:35
The conga line of corporate grifters above, namely Liberal, Labor, and the wealthy investors in “Clean Energy Tasmania”, have no intention of benefiting our State with what was called, until recently, Project Marinus.
The tens of millions of dollars being spent on ongoing TasNetworks / Marinus Pty Ltd / ReCFIT PR (“community engagement”) to push the big lie of ‘jobs and growth’ have hit deep mud on the road to grifting us for even more money because they haven’t found ANY actual benefits of the Marinus Link for the people paying for it – us. Ditto the REZ, and TasNetworks’ gold-plated new transmission grid (the NWTD) which are being forced on us with no genuine ‘business case’, let alone independent cost-benefit analyses that might justify all the money taxpayers and electricity users are told we have to cough up to subsidise the project.
The feeble lie of ‘thousands of jobs’ during the construction phase relates almost entirely to out-of-state FIFO workers, with a few temporary blue collar jobs for locals. After that, nothing.
And for all the pious political palaver, all the proposed new renewable energy will be privately owned and sold at a guaranteed profit to Tas Hydro which will use it to gamble on the National Energy Market to provide ‘efficiency dividends’ for the sole shareholder, the State government .. if they can. Our two major parties are happy to use corporatised former public utilities as cash cows.
But the Marinus figures don’t stack up. We know from Basslink, and from TasNet’s own figures, that any cost benefit analysis shows that Tasmanians don’t benefit from, and even lose economically, from Project Marinus.
Worse, in the ongoing grind of PR inflicted on us, Marinus CEO Wykamp is now indicating the greater flow of energy will be from the Mainland to us, rather than vice versa, and that we’ll be on standby as the laughable “Battery of the Nation” – laughable because Wykamp’s ignoring the fact that the fastest growth in energy on the Mainland is battery storage. They don’t, and they won’t, need us.
The idea that our own renewable energy might be owned by us, stored by us, and used by us for our benefit, isn’t what Lib-Lab and the investors want. They want ‘investment opportunities’ created, the costs socialised and the profits privatised.
Clean Energy Tasmania’s rent-seeking for more handouts, and Labor’s feigned outrage and pearl-clutching at any delay to Marinus, shows they don’t care about us, or the climate, or benefits to our State.
The silence from the Jacquie Lambie Network, elected on the back of growing disgust with Lib-Lab, and the premise that they’d hold the bastards to account, says everything about their actual role, namely ensuring Liberal preferences for Lambie’s next tilt at retaining her Federal seat. If it were otherwise they might speak up on this. The Greens, wedged on renewable energy by their mostly ‘bright green’ voters, are also silent except in Estimates, which are never reported by our media.
Tasmania is a state for sale that’s run by corporate clowns who can’t even cobble together a grift that they can plausibly pass off as benefiting us. Only a few days ago, Wykamp was saying the FID would be approved “in days”, but now it’s another year away. She’s just a PR shill, so what she says is of no use to communities already harmed by the company and government plans. All we know is that continuing uncertainty in the investor space displaces the discussion we actually should be having about an energy industry that benefits us, and doesn’t destroy vast swathes of our remaining wild ecosystems in the process.
No one outside local communities, it seems, is talking about that, and we don’t even rate as ‘stakeholders’.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Grifting is very common …
Roderick
August 8, 2024 at 00:36
Franco, Mussolini, Tito, Thatcher, Trump, Idi Amin, Hitler, Pinochet, Hussein, AFL, Putin, Netanyahu – they all remind me of Tasmania, from its colonial corruption to its present day, where the public is suppressed and denied basic human needs such as human rights, healthcare, housing, democracy and decency. Alan Price sang a song “sell, sell, sell everything you stand for”.
Watch the film O Lucky Man by the director, the late Lindsay Anderson. It’s a film about greed, corruption and the insanity of governments and corporations.
Tasmania – the Island of Despair.