The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has found Snowy Hydro was only partly effective in managing delivery of the Snowy 2.0 pumped storage hydropower project, identifying shortcomings in governance, risk management and performance reporting.
The audit made five recommendations aimed at improving project governance, including enhanced documentation of key decisions, stronger traceability of reporting to the board, improved performance measurement and reporting, and changes to public reporting on the project’s progress and outcomes.
In a statement issued on 18 June, Snowy Hydro said it agreed with four of the five recommendations and partially agreed with the recommendation relating to public reporting.
“The recommendations do not propose fundamental changes to Snowy 2.0’s underlying delivery model, governance structure or management approach,” the company said, adding that it remained committed to improving delivery oversight.
Snowy Hydro said improvements identified by the ANAO had already been completed or were underway and that the auditor’s guidance had informed many of those initiatives.
The company said some of the issues raised in the audit reflected “deliberate commercial positions” taken to exercise contractual rights and hold principal contractor Future Generation Joint Venture accountable on behalf of Australian taxpayers.
Snowy Hydro added that it remained committed to governance and oversight of Future Generation Joint Venture’s delivery of Snowy 2.0.
Snowy 2.0 is a pumped storage hydropower expansion of the Snowy Scheme that will connect the Tantangara and Talbingo reservoirs through about 27 km of tunnels and an underground power station with 2.2 GW of generation capacity and 350 GWh of storage.
Snowy Hydro describes the project as Australia’s most significant energy infrastructure project and says it will provide more than half of the energy storage capacity required by the National Electricity Market by 2050, with storage equivalent to around 26 million household batteries.
