No way of gauging if rollout of renewables will fit the bill

But Coalition governments in the next decade turned the Iemma-Costa blueprints into reality. NSW power stations were sold off in 2013 and 2014, the NSW networks in 2015 and 2016, and the NSW retailers along the way. Each sale was front-page news and always bitterly opposed by the labour movement.

Another decade on, debate over privatisation seems to have ended, the politics of electricity ownership now eerily quiet, even as the rollout of a different electricity system has started. It will be the largest infrastructure project ever in NSW, based once again in the Hunter.

Building an electricity system based on renewables dwarfs the last major re-fit almost half a century ago. That rollout was entirely in the hands of the mighty NSW Electricity Commission. The Commission flicked the switch on the Eraring power station's first turbine in 1982, and Bayswater's in 1985. The Commission ran its own coal mines, cut high voltage transmission lines through farm and forest, through the Hunter, onto smelters at Kurri Kurri and Tomago, and down to Sydney. One newspaper at the time said the Commission was building the Ruhr of the southern hemisphere.

But the days of electricity from fossil fuels are over, the planet is cooking, there is no choice. New giant transmission lines are to be built across the Hunter to haul electricity from wind and solar farms in the renewable energy zones (called REZs) in the Central West-Orana, New England and upper Hunter regions. Back-up batteries will be assembled on the old power station sites where they can link readily to the network, and a gas-fired firming plant is being erected at Kurri Kurri, a partner to the one at Colonga at Lake Munmorah. Ending fossil fuel dependence - decarbonising the grid, as they say - is massive in scope, it is costly and ambitious.

The job is in new hands. There are new government players. One is the Energy Corporation of NSW, a state-owned enterprise. EnergyCo is doing the up-front planning, mapping where the REZs will be and the routes the transmission lines will traverse, and securing regulatory approvals. Then private investors take over, to build and operate the lot: transmission lines, sub-stations, wind and solar farms. A preferred tenderer has already been named for the Central West-Orana REZ, a consortium of two Spanish corporations, Acciona and Grupo Cobra, plus NSW retailer Endeavour Energy.

The consortium will build and run 90 kilometres of 500 kV lines and 150 kilometres of 330 kV lines, plus sub-stations, capable of delivering 4.5 GW of renewables. The Financial Review says the consortium submitted a bid of over $5 billion. Page 421 of NSW Treasury's latest annual report says the consortium, if finally approved, will hold a 35-years operations lease. The consortium will need finance from large investment funds. The lure is guaranteed payment from electricity consumers. A hefty 40 per cent of the average electricity bill in NSW flows to the network operators. In effect, the global consortium will buy the rights to a guaranteed portion of every electricity bill in NSW for the next 35 years.

Likewise, other private operators will assemble generation projects in the REZs and sell electricity into the grid. Again, the attraction is stable long-term cash flows funded by monthly electricity bills.

The rollout of renewables in NSW comes, therefore, with the untested assumption that a market-based electricity system - planned and regulated by government technocrats, built and operated by global consortiums, financed by major investment houses - will give us a reliable, carbon-free, affordable electricity system. It's a big bet.