In a meeting with Nick Duigan, Tasmania’s Minister for Energy and Renewables, a few months ago a member of the advisory group Climate Tasmania asked the minister if he would care to say anything about the need for Tasmania to transition from petrol, diesel and gas to clean energy.
His response? “No, I don’t see the need to.” End of discussion.
In requesting the meeting, Climate Tasmania took at face value the government’s repeated assurance that it’s serious about cutting Tasmania’s high per-capita emissions. Knowing that the biggest single source of those emissions is exhaust from motor vehicles, the group wanted to learn more about government plans to secure alternative energy sources.
It’s not just Nick Duigan who doesn’t like talking about such things, but the the entire Tasmanian government. And now we know it’s also most members of the federal Coalition, who have just dropped emissions reduction as an energy policy objective – a whole other story for another time.
A Climate Tasmania colleague at that June meeting commented that the minister’s response explains why the government has been silent on what we used to think was the main motivation for Marinus, which will more than double electricity transmission across Bass Strait.
The Clean Energy Finance Corporation’s biggest-ever investment, $3.8 billion covering 80 per cent of the cost of a single Marinus cable, has been made on the basis that the investment is critical to Australia’s achieving the net zero emissions target.
In February last year Marinus Link Pty Ltd, the company overseeing the work, put climate change at the top of its list of reasons Australians should get behind the project. “Marinus Link will help address climate change, creating a better tomorrow for future generations,” it said, enabling states on both sides of Bass Strait to stop relying on fossil fuels.
The Marinus statement went on: “Australia is undergoing a renewable energy revolution, with rapid growth in renewable generation, closure of coal plants and support from investors and governments for large-scale energy storage. Marinus Link supports this revolution.
“Marinus Link will ensure customers and businesses have access to the most reliable, clean power. It will unlock Tasmania’s hydropower resources, providing Australia access to green energy storage with a capacity approximately 30,000 times bigger than Victoria’s Big Battery.
“When demand for power exceeds supply, Tasmania’s hydro power will be readily available for use as top up or back up across the National Electricity Market.”
With some qualifications this is all very rational and sensible. But in his most recent statement on Marinus, in August, the minister spoke of jobs and the economy but made no mention of the potential for Marinus to cut fossil fuel emissions.
The Marinus promo might have benefited from the kind of insight Ruth Forrest MLC brought to the debate in an analysis of prospects for hydro power last month.
“History shows a pattern,” she said. “Every two or three decades, severe droughts have tested the limits of the state’s storages, forcing emergency measures and reshaping energy planning.” She cited Hydro Tasmania chief executive officer Rachel Watson last August speaking of 2025 being “the second year of the worst multi-season drought … in Tasmania’s history”.
There are lessons from this for both sides of Bass Strait. Asked Forrest, “are the rivers of gold predicted to flow from Marinus exports based on risky assumptions?” And with more frequent droughts, “will Marinus need to be relied upon for significant imports rather than the current assumption of lucrative exports?”
Despite large construction subsidies from Canberra, Marinus will add as much as $170 a year to Tasmanian power bills, according to analysis by the University of Tasmania’s Richard Eccleston and Kimberly Brockman. But if recent low rainfall is a trend, the link will end up being more valuable to an energy-starved Tasmania than to the rest of the National Energy Market.
Tasmanian government ministers and MPs have been noticeably absent from consultations about the project with North-West communities most affected by new transmission infrastructure.
Community consultation by Marinus Link representatives has generated a sense of resignation, resentment and mistrust, as one North-West resident put it to me. He added, “What would gain my endorsement is a clear plan for how this proposal will directly drive a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a robust strategy to maximise broad local benefit.”
All of which brings us back to the main driver of all this: climate. The Rockliff government avoided that word in allocating portfolios. Perhaps that’s what opened the door for Nick Duigan to determine that reducing Tasmanian emissions is not worth discussing with Climate Tasmania.