The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) believes that NSW Labor’s commitment to creating a public body to accelerate investment in pumped hydro, community batteries and renewables turns the page on a decade of disastrous privatisation and will drive a cleaner, more reliable energy future.

The NSW Energy Security Corporation will start with $1 billion in seed funding and focus on medium to long-duration renewable storage solutions like pumped hydro and other technologies that can stabilise the grid.

It will also invest in community batteries, allowing households to make better use of rooftop solar.

ETU NSW secretary, Allen Hicks, says privatisation had failed NSW communities and the return of strong public involvement was well overdue: “Privatisation has been a complete con. Everyone knows that when you sell off a monopoly like the poles and wires the public loses because the new private operator has to find a profit. We are all paying for this disaster with surging energy prices.

“Labor’s policy is a massive step in the right direction. We are going through the greatest energy transformation in history. Expecting corporates, who are overwhelmingly motivated by shareholder profits, to invest for the public interest is dishonest nonsense.”

He adds that a publicly renewable energy body investing in long-duration storage will make our electricity grid cleaner, more reliable and fairer.

“With this policy Labor recognises that government must shoulder the responsibility of actively shaping, leading and funding the state’s energy transition. This is a visionary policy that energy workers fully endorse,” he says.