Energy Grid Alliance

22/10/2026

Something does not add up with the way Western Renewables Link costs were presented through the EES process.

The WRL Economic Impact Assessment used approximately $1.53 billion in development and construction expenditure.

But that figure was based on information AusNet provided to PwC in June 2024. PwC itself described it as a point-in-time estimate and noted that costs could change as AusNet progressed the project and engaged principal contractors.

Now look at what happened next.

By August 2024, AusNet had shortlisted two major construction consortia and was progressing an interactive tender process.

By December 2025, AusNet awarded ACCIONA/Genus an approximately $1.6 billion construction contract.

The IAC hearing did not finish until March 2026.

And Brookfield later described WRL as an approximately $4 billion project, while stating that AusNet had finalised the commercial framework with the Victorian Government and executed the binding construction contract in Q4 2025.

So here is the question communities deserve an answer to:

When did AusNet, VicGrid and the Victorian Government first have materially updated contractor pricing and whole-of-project cost information, and why did the EES process continue to rely on a $1.53 billion expenditure assumption originating in June 2024?

This does not prove that the EES figure was wrong when it was first prepared.

But it does raise a serious question about whether that figure remained an appropriate and current basis for the economic evidence as the EES and IAC process continued.

I asked VicGrid to explain the relationship between the $1.53 billion EES figure, the $1.6 billion construction contract and Brookfield’s approximately $4 billion project figure.

They did not answer those questions. Instead, they referred me to the independent WRL cost assessment now underway.

That assessment may tell Victorians what WRL costs today.

But there is a separate question that still needs to be answered:

What did AusNet and Government know about the changing cost of WRL during the EES and IAC process, and when did they know it?

For communities that have spent years being told this project has been rigorously assessed, that really does matter.

14/10/2026

For six years, the Victorian Government and proponents of the Western Renewables Link have repeatedly talked about “meaningful engagement” with affected communities.

I’ve tried to take that seriously.

I’ve spent years researching the project, reading the technical material, participating in formal processes, documenting concerns and putting evidence-based arguments directly to the people responsible for making decisions.

Last month I wrote again, raising specific concerns about the Minister’s assessment of the WRL, particularly the findings relating to Darley. I asked for those findings to be reconsidered and substantiated.

The response I received today acknowledged what I had asked, then simply failed to answer it. Instead, I was told the EES process was complete, the planning amendment had been approved, and a future report would eventually be made public.

That is not meaningful engagement.

For years I approached the WRL on the assumption that if you researched something properly, documented it carefully and put a strong case to the relevant decision-maker, there was at least some prospect of substantive engagement.

After six years, I’ve accumulated a fair bit of evidence that, on many of these issues, the limiting factor isn’t the quality of the argument. It is whether the recipient has any intention, willingness or capacity to engage with it.

Governments cannot keep talking about meaningful community engagement while responding to substantive concerns with process statements and administrative acknowledgements.

Eventually people stop believing the language because their experience tells them otherwise.

For the record, after receiving this latest response, mine was considerably shorter:

“Thanks for nothing.”

06/10/2026

The Weekly Times has now reported that the Western Victorian Community Alliance has lodged a submission with the Big Build Royal Commission asking it to investigate the Western Renewables Link (WRL), including whether corruption, criminal conduct or serious misconduct affected procurement, contractual arrangements, construction costs or oversight.

In the Brookfield Infrastructure Income Fund 2025 Annual Report referred to in the Weekly Times story Brookfield describes AusNet as one of its Australian utility investments and says: “A key milestone was achieved in the fourth quarter at Western Renewables Link (‘WRL’), a ~A$4 billion 500-kilovolt transmission augmentation project...”

It then immediately says that AusNet “finalized the commercial framework with the Victorian Government and executed a binding construction contract for WRL”, which Brookfield says helped “de-risk execution” and improve visibility over capital deployment and potential returns. That combination is much more significant than the $4 billion figure in isolation.

This isn't a journalist estimating that WRL might eventually cost $4 billion. It isn't an opposition politician or community group making the claim. It is Brookfield reporting to investors about the performance of a fund that actually holds an investment in AusNet.

There is another useful piece of context earlier in the report. Brookfield tells investors that its infrastructure strategy benefits from assets with contracted or regulated revenue streams, typically indexed to inflation, providing predictable cash yields and inflation protection.

So the strongest evidentiary point is now very clean:

By the end of 2025, Brookfield was publicly telling its investors that WRL was an approximately A$4 billion project, that AusNet had finalised the commercial framework with the Victorian Government, and that a binding construction contract had been executed.

That makes the chronology around the A$1.53 billion figure used in the 2025 WRL EES exceptionally important. The question isn't simply whether $1.53 billion and $4 billion measure exactly the same thing. They may not. The critical question is what each figure includes, when the Victorian Government/VicGrid became aware of the approximately $4 billion figure, and why the much lower figure remained the public figure in the EES.

Farmers are demanding the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Big Build investigate a secret government deal on AusNet’s 500kV Western Renewables Link and determine why its cost has blown out from $1.5bn to more than $4bn.

23/07/2026

A closer examination of the modelling choices, excluded costs and predetermined assumptions behind AEMO’s preferred energy pathway.

The 2026 Integrated System Plan does not demonstrate that Australia’s complete electricity transition is the lowest-cost option for consumers. It identifies the preferred pathway only after government policies, committed projects, demand forecasts and major infrastructure decisions have been fixed within the modelling.

Billions of dollars in committed and anticipated projects are excluded from headline costs, while consumer-funded technologies and gas infrastructure provide benefits without being fully included in the system cost. The result is a technically sophisticated but narrowly framed plan whose conclusions depend heavily on assumptions that are insufficiently transparent or independently tested.

The greatest flaw is not a single erroneous equation. It is the cumulative effect of decisions about what is fixed, what is optimised, what is excluded, what is annualised, what is assumed to eventuate, and which uncertainties are allowed to challenge the answer.

A genuinely transparent ISP would publish a project-by-project reconciliation of all unfinished infrastructure, rerun the system without each major assumed project, co-optimise demand-side and grid-scale alternatives, show total consumer-funded expenditure, test severe non-recovery delivery cases, and report results without subjective scenario weighting.

Until that exists, the ISP should be read as AEMO’s preferred pathway within an increasingly predetermined policy and infrastructure architecture, not independent proof that the entire architecture is economically optimal.

Transmission Could Deliver a Clean Energy Future if the Right Solutions were Deployed A closer examination of the modelling choices, excluded costs and predetermined assumptions behind AEMO’s preferred energy pathway The 2026 ISP is not a clean-sheet, whole-of-system assessment of the cheapest way...