Love lashes Labor over lack of vanadium battery State Budget funding, Saffioti says Govt is committed

Nationals WA leader Shane Love has lashed the State Government for not including funding for Kalgoorlie-Boulder’s planned $150 million vanadium-flow battery in this year’s Budget forward estimates. But Treasurer Rita Saffioti says the Government is committed to the project, with the final cost to be determined when further detailed planning has been completed. Premier Roger Cook announced the project on the balcony of the Palace Hotel in Kalgoorlie-Boulder in January in the lead-up to the State election, saying it would be up-and-running by 2029. Mr Cook pitched the 50MW/500MW-hour battery — which would provide 10 hours of back-up electricity storage — as a key solution for the Goldfields city’s power supply woes, which included a catastrophic multi-day outage in January 2024. The Premier also promoted it as part of the development of a homegrown vanadium industry that would create about 150 jobs. During the Legislative Assembly’s budget estimates hearing in State Parliament on Tuesday, Mr Love asked Ms Saffioti why the $150m had not been included in the State Budget forward estimates. “I am asking the Treasurer: Has this been quietly scrapped, or is there still some planning going on?” he said “There must be some money in the Budget somewhere for this battery if it is going to be delivered in 2029.” Ms Saffioti replied by saying the project was “very much still a commitment”, with Energy Policy WA — part of the new Department of Energy and Economic Diversification — responsible for planning the delivery of the battery. “In relation to the estimated total cost, that will crystallise once that planning has been undertaken,” she said. “It is not unusual for there to be planning money in the Budget for some projects that require further planning, and then the commitment is crystallised once we have a closer (estimate to complete), and also a timeframe of delivery.” Following further questioning from Mr Love, Ms Saffioti said there would be a firm Budget commitment for the battery when further detailed planning had been done. “As I said, we are committed to these projects. We will go through and undertake the necessary planning and then cash flow in subsequent Budgets or midyear reviews,” she said. In a statement released after the parliamentary exchange, Mr Love said the lack of any forward funding allocation raised serious doubts about whether the battery would be operational by 2029, as promised. “Kalgoorlie has every right to question whether this project was ever a serious commitment, or simply a convenient election pitch to win votes,” he said. Mr Cook in January said the vanadium would be mined from one of the world’s largest deposits near Meekatharra, and all the construction and installation work would be done in WA. Australian Vanadium, the company developing the Meekatharra mine, last week told the Kalgoorlie Miner it was currently going through the approvals process. Chief executive Graham Arvidson wouldn’t commit to a definitive date for first production for the mine — which he said would have a 25-year life. Mr Arvidson did say: “We have every reason to believe we could get our key approvals and get to that shovel-ready status in something like the next 12 months.” He also said the global price for vanadium was not where the company wanted it to be — but he believed this would change. “The vanadium price right now does not incentivise us to get into production, so we have the problem that a lot of commodity producers have,” he said. “However, what I would highlight, and this shouldn’t be a surprise to any West Australians, (is that) commodities change rapidly.” Mr Arvidson said vanadium had traditionally been used for steel alloying, and China, the world’s biggest user, was in an economic downturn. “You put one kilogram of vanadium in a tonne of steel, and it literally doubles the yield strength,” he said. “But what’s also happened in the (past three years) is production of rebar, which is the main use case for vanadium in China, has gone down 40 per cent, so that’s still what’s dominating the price. “So if people look at vanadium, they’re going to go, ‘well, the price is low right now’. Yes it is, but there’s a really extreme exponential growth in battery use.” He said three years ago only one per cent of the world’s vanadium went into batteries. “Three years later, fast-forward right now in China, 17 per cent has this year gone into their batteries,” he said. “What was traditionally a steel alloying metal, the supply-demand dynamics are going to flip.”