The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has stood by its decision to be absent from a meeting in Western Victoria, where residents and farmers protested power lines being built on local farms.
The meeting came after a convoy of tractors and utes rolled into the streets of St Arnaud on Monday to fight against the VNI-West transmission line project, which would see 500-kilovolt overhead transmission line being built to connect the Western Renewables Link at Bulgana to New South Wales near Echuca.More than 300 residents, including farmers furious about powerlines being built over their properties, gathered in the town hall, but AEMO refused to attend.
AEMO was accused of avoiding the big crowd and attempting to influence the consultation, but AEMO Victorian planning group manager Nicola Falcon denied the allegation.
“We want to be able to have productive discussions with a number of different stakeholders.”
She said the market operator wanted to discuss the projects with as many people as possible, but holding consultations with a large group made it hard to “target a number of different consumers and talk to a number of different landholders.”
“Consumers want affordable, reliable electricity, and we really do want to be able to explain to as many different people as possible that will help share that low cost,” Falcon said.
“We want to be able to have productive discussions with a number of different stakeholders.”
But the Victoria Energy Policy Centre’s Professor Bruce Mountain said the transmission plan in dispute was written in 2010—more than a decade old—a time when solar was “10 times more expensive than it is now and the wind was three times more expensive.”
Mountain told AAP that the project “had a semblance of credibility because fossil-fuel differences could have justified, to some degree, transmission expansion between states.”
He added that a better solution to the grid would be building them on existing infrastructure in Gippsland, the heart of Victorian energy production for more than half a century.
“We’ve got all these circuits that have got masses of spare capacity on them,” he said.
“And it will double for so little additional transmission capability.”
Meanwhile, the Victorian government has defended the project, AEMO and its consultation.
“AEMO have consulted with communities and experts on the design of these transmission project and will continue to engage as the project progress, ensuring they deliver benefits for both local communities and energy consumers,” a spokeswoman said.
“New transmission is vital for securing clean, affordable power for every Victorian town and enabling the development of our renewable energy industry as we work towards net-zero emissions by 2045.”
Rally organiser and farmer Jason Barratt said consultation so far had been lacking.
“Absolutely pathetic, honestly,” he told AAP.
“It’s just been jargon … the conversation has been extremely poor and it’s just creating angst and anxiety community-wide.”
“They could potentially have huge ongoing effects for years to come as far as the way we farm and the viability of our farms,” Barratt said.
