A 1,000km transmission line between Townsville and Mt Isa could create thousands of jobs and pave the way for renewable energy in north-west Queensland, says the company behind the proposal.
The CopperString 2.0 project would connect the North West Minerals Province to the national energy grid, potentially driving down power prices by as much as 40 per cent and creating some 3,500 full-time, ongoing jobs.
"That's a very exciting opportunity for north and northwest Queensland but it's one that won't just land in our lap," company director Joseph O'Brien said.
He said a report into the project "concluded that access to the national grid and North West Minerals Province is the only resource base in eastern Australia that doesn't have access to the national grid".
"It will just make it so much more attractive to invest."
Second time lucky?
In 2012 a near-identical project was shelved after the then-owners of Mount Isa Mines, Xstrata and Ergon, backed a different power project, leaving CopperString without major support.
Mr O'Brien said the new report summary was very similar to information that was shared when the project was revisited in 2019.
"In many ways it's no different to what we've been saying for the past year and in fact what many stakeholders have been saying for the past decade or more," he said.
"There are Queensland Government reports from the mid-2000s that talked about the very significant constraint of electricity supply in the North West Minerals Province."
Mount Isa to Townsville Economic Development Zone (MITEZ) chief executive Glen Graham said he hoped the project stood a better chance of success because of the state's focus on renewable energy.
"Quite a lot of things have changed since 2010," he said.
"The Queensland Government announced a renewable energy target to achieve about 50 per cent renewable energy generation by 2030.
"Since then there has been a lot of solar farms and wind farms constructed in Queensland … and probably for the Queensland Government the greatest opportunity to achieve that target would be in the north-west, where we have ample solar and wind and geothermal, and biomass as well, that could all be generated and connected into the national electricity market.
"But to do that you would have to have a substantial transmission line for them to connect into.
"That's one of the advantages of the CopperString project, because that would be the enabler for a whole raft of new renewable energy projects."
