The arid interior has the highest solar resource of any developed country. Sub-10c/kWh delivered consumer power. 1,000+ GW of desert solar. 40 GW of firm dispatchable pumped hydro at Alice Hub at 770 m head. The cheapest sovereign electricity in the developed world.
Cons: the existing system and current trajectory. Pros: the integrated MMA corridor programme.
Australian household electricity prices have tripled over two decades despite abundant solar resources and gas reserves. Industrial customers pay more than competitors in jurisdictions with worse renewable resources. Productivity, manufacturing competitiveness, and household budgets all suffer.
Coal generators are aging out of the fleet over the next decade but no integrated national replacement plan exists. The current approach relies on uncoordinated state-level investment and contracts-for-difference that have delivered cost overruns and missed timelines.
Snowy 2.0 targets 350 GWh of storage at 2 GW - approximately 7 days of operation. Australian batteries are measured in single-digit GWh. There is no national reserve sufficient for an extended sun-and-wind drought across the continent.
AEMO’s ISP relies on hundreds of dispersed renewable energy zones requiring new transmission to each site. Community resistance to transmission lines on rural and farming land has stalled multiple major projects. Coordination cost is enormous.
Australia imports 80-90% of refined fuel and runs approximately 30 days of diesel stock - well below the 90-day IEA obligation. Heavy freight, mining, agriculture, and defence are all dependent on continuous imported fuel.
The Coalition’s nuclear proposal targets first power in the late 2030s at $250-400 billion plus. Capital cost, regulatory framework, and skilled-workforce ramp are not in place. Coal cannot wait 15 years.
The arid interior has the highest solar resource of any developed country — 2,400–2,800 kWh/m2/year insolation across the inland Solar & Farming Zones, with potential to scale generation to 1,000 GW on under 2% of Australia's land area. The corridor brings water to it, takes electricity from it, and turns the underused centre into the engine that powers the whole continent. See MMA Memo 1 — Solar Sizing for the SBC: Reaching 1,000 GW.
Legislated under 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, locked in by policy. The cheapest sovereign electricity in the developed world. Manufacturing, households, and EV charging all benefit from the same policy lever.
32 days of continuous national grid supply at full discharge. Frequency control, black-start capability, baseload replacement - all from one strategic asset. The largest pumped hydro system on Earth, in the location geography already provided.
Electrification of freight, transport, and industrial process heat collapses Australia’s diesel and gas import bill - reducing the largest strategic vulnerability the country carries.
Sub-10c/kWh retail electricity makes EVs cheaper to run than petrol cars on every grid, even before the grid fully decarbonises. Both transitions delivered by a single price signal.
72 GW of high-voltage DC transmission rides on the same MMC viaduct as freight, water, and passenger services. No separate easement, no parallel build, no community opposition over new transmission corridors.
Generation capacity scales well beyond Australian demand. Surplus power exports to Asia via HVDC undersea cables and AI compute services create sovereign revenue streams without depleting domestic supply.
Programme-wide ROI summary → · Memo 19 (cost) · Memo 20 (returns) · Memo 21 (counterfactual)