Renew Economy has published Sunshine Hydro CEO, Rick McElhinney’s, observations on the substantial and historic value of Snowy Hydro 2.0 for Australia’s near- and long-term energy future.
Snowy 2.0 is often judged by today’s challenges, but its real value will become clear over time. Australia needs massive long-duration storage to firm renewables and power heavy industry and Snowy 2.0 will be a cornerstone of that future.
Tomago Aluminium’s journey toward 24/7 clean energy shows exactly why these assets matter. With the Superhybrid model: firm, continuous clean power for industry, data centres, and green-fuel production. Pumped hydro remains the backbone of a reliable, decarbonised grid.
Here’s an excerpt:
In 1932, when the Sydney Harbour Bridge finally opened, the nation was exhausted from years of argument. Critics had labelled it too ambitious, too costly, too slow. Yet when the first cars crossed the arch, all that noise dissolved.
Snowy 2.0 stands in that same lineage, as a project currently living through its difficult years but destined to become an anchor of Australia’s clean energy future.
Snowy 2.0 is not being built in gentle country. It is being carved through the backbone of the continent, deep beneath a landscape shaped by ancient glaciers and violent geological shifts.
When crews stand inside the partially completed tunnels, they are standing inside a future river, with vast steel-lined arteries that will soon move water with a force greater than the pressure on a submarine hull. This is infrastructure operating at the threshold of physics.
That sense of scale extends beyond engineering. Snowy 2.0 is being built as the nation undergoes a profound shift. Electricity demand is rising after decades of stability.
Households are switching to electric heating and vehicles. But perhaps most remarkable, a generation of AI-driven data centres is emerging across the world. These giant, always-on clusters consume power continuously and cannot tolerate instability.
These facilities are the new factories of the digital age, reshaping global energy systems. Major technology companies are searching for long-duration, zero-carbon storage to anchor their largest campuses.
Most countries don’t have it. Australia, through Snowy 2.0, soon will.
Read the rest of the story here: https://lnkd.in/gmE7tRVp
When the Tankers Don’t Come: Fuel Security and the Case for Domestic Biomethanol
April 8, 2026
Australia imports the overwhelming majority of its refined liquid fuels. We consume in the order of 50 billion litres of petroleum products annually. Our domestic stockholding sits at roughly 20 to 28 days of supply — well below the 90-day reserve obligation we committed to as a member of the International Energy Agency. We have been in technical breach of that commitment for over a decade.
