Back to all news articles
27/06/2018
“Fortunately, it has attracted the interest of the local players and we have the best in the world here with us today,” he said.
“We’ve been drilling like mad through the mountains.
“There’s something like eight or 10 different rock forms all the way along here, we’ve done a lot of boring down here to test the geology.
“You can never bore enough to test the geology to understand what we’re going to find when we get down there.
“And up there is a big fault and faults aren’t good – you get a tunnel boring machine stuck, it’s not good, they don’t go in reverse.
“The complexity of this will be something else, including getting the 10 metre in diameter tunnel boring machines here to do this.”
Mr Broad said the Environmental Impact Statement process is not something they will take lightly.
“The Kosciuszko National Park is very dear to our hearts, it is our backyard,” he said.
“Our footprint is small and our desire to look after the park and keep it in its current state for the generations that will come after us is extremely high.”
Mr Broad said Snowy Hydro 2.0 will use a sizable proportion of internal funding to finance the construction.
“For arguments sake it’s going to cost us $4 billion, we plan to finance $2 billion of it from internal sources,” he said.
“Snowy is a very successful company.
“When you’ve got such a massive expansion you use your internal funds as much as you can, and we will.
“We won’t need external money until probably 2021 or there about.
“For those of you listening to some commentators who say this doesn’t stack up – they’re wrong.
“This has a return rate of eight per cent on the most conservative set of assumptions.
“We’re a BBB company, we’re strong financially, we’ve got a strong balance sheet, we can handle this within our balance sheet, the things we have to do.”
Mr Broad said the use of local procurement during the build will be a challenge.
“We have wonderful skills here in Australia, the problem is the demand for those skills is very high,” he said.
“It is a challenge, but I have no doubt that it will be solved, I have no doubt that the Australians will – in some form or another – be in the middle of it.
“But we will be having overseas parts in building tunnel boring machines, and some of the engineering design work.
“The universities here are producing fabulous graduates and we’re having lots of young graduates coming in and spending time with us, which is building the generation to come that will be up there with the skills anywhere in the world.”
Mr Broad said the safety of the Snowy Hydro 2.0 workers will be the most significant challenge that they face.
“The biggest challenge we’ve got in the company is not to hurt anyone,” he said.
“It is the riskiness of doing it that wakes me up at night.
“Beyond everything else, getting that right wakes me up.
“But I do believe the engineering will be solved, I do think we’ll finance it, and I do think the market will deliver up the outcomes we’re after.”
“We’ve been drilling like mad through the mountains.
“There’s something like eight or 10 different rock forms all the way along here, we’ve done a lot of boring down here to test the geology.
“You can never bore enough to test the geology to understand what we’re going to find when we get down there.
“And up there is a big fault and faults aren’t good – you get a tunnel boring machine stuck, it’s not good, they don’t go in reverse.
“The complexity of this will be something else, including getting the 10 metre in diameter tunnel boring machines here to do this.”
Mr Broad said the Environmental Impact Statement process is not something they will take lightly.
“The Kosciuszko National Park is very dear to our hearts, it is our backyard,” he said.
“Our footprint is small and our desire to look after the park and keep it in its current state for the generations that will come after us is extremely high.”
Mr Broad said Snowy Hydro 2.0 will use a sizable proportion of internal funding to finance the construction.
“For arguments sake it’s going to cost us $4 billion, we plan to finance $2 billion of it from internal sources,” he said.
“Snowy is a very successful company.
“When you’ve got such a massive expansion you use your internal funds as much as you can, and we will.
“We won’t need external money until probably 2021 or there about.
“For those of you listening to some commentators who say this doesn’t stack up – they’re wrong.
“This has a return rate of eight per cent on the most conservative set of assumptions.
“We’re a BBB company, we’re strong financially, we’ve got a strong balance sheet, we can handle this within our balance sheet, the things we have to do.”
Mr Broad said the use of local procurement during the build will be a challenge.
“We have wonderful skills here in Australia, the problem is the demand for those skills is very high,” he said.
“It is a challenge, but I have no doubt that it will be solved, I have no doubt that the Australians will – in some form or another – be in the middle of it.
“But we will be having overseas parts in building tunnel boring machines, and some of the engineering design work.
“The universities here are producing fabulous graduates and we’re having lots of young graduates coming in and spending time with us, which is building the generation to come that will be up there with the skills anywhere in the world.”
Mr Broad said the safety of the Snowy Hydro 2.0 workers will be the most significant challenge that they face.
“The biggest challenge we’ve got in the company is not to hurt anyone,” he said.
“It is the riskiness of doing it that wakes me up at night.
“Beyond everything else, getting that right wakes me up.
“But I do believe the engineering will be solved, I do think we’ll finance it, and I do think the market will deliver up the outcomes we’re after.”