Q&A with a sector leader: Looking back to build Australia's energy future with Gordon Taylor

• You began your career as a transmission network planner and have since delivered some of the largest infrastructure projects in Australia and internationally. What has changed most dramatically in the energy and infrastructure landscape over the course of your career?

When I started my career, we had excess generation capacity and there was no need to build new transmission lines. That was in South Africa, but I can see there were similarities in Australia, where for many years the industry was focused on reducing costs for consumers across the system. 

A fundamental way we achieved this was by avoiding the build out of new lines unless it was absolutely necessary, and instead, use the system that you have and do it more efficiently. 

Now, we are still focused on reducing costs for consumers but how we do that has evolved as we desperately need to get new transmission infrastructure in place in the shortest space of time, in a race against the closure of coal, and there is a second race underway to connect new renewable generation. 

So, the industry has gone from slow moving to highly energised rapid growth.

• What lessons from past major projects are most relevant to today’s energy transition?

Australia is currently going through a meta cycle of investment in infrastructure, which means the energy sector is competing for resources with road, rail and other sectors. 

We're building electricity infrastructure, but a large proportion of the work is similar to other large linear infrastructure projects. That means it’s still the same civil contractors and resources that you need to access, and as power systems worldwide transition to renewable energy, we are also competing with other nations for highly-sought-after equipment.

This is the third meta cycle that I've operated in throughout my career, and the important part is to understand that no matter what we do, we are ultimately going to be up against a resource constraint. You have to pre-empt that and adopt a laser focus to ensure productivity and secure resources right from the start. 

That means securing our share of equipment like transformers, reactors and conductor wire under long lead agreements, and getting the best contractors available in our pool of contracting resources.

• Transgrid is delivering critical infrastructure at a time of rising community scrutiny and growing system complexity. What have you learned about balancing urgency with community expectations, and how important will social licence become to the success or failure of the energy transition?

Social licence is fundamental to realising Australia’s clean energy vision and to the success or failure of every major project we deliver. 

It's really hard for anybody who is presented with a proposal to build a transmission line on their property that may have been in the family for many generations. The only way to go into these interactions is with a sense of humility and empathy. 

Our challenge in the industry is to find a pathway where we can give meaningful agency to communities. There's no point doing consultation if all you do is share information, listen, walk away, and fail to act on the community’s feedback.

If nothing changes as a result of consultation, I think people can quite legitimately say ‘you haven't engaged. You've just listened with deaf ears’.

Local knowledge, views and feedback were absolutely pivotal in refining the routes in NSW for both HumeLink and VNI West to reduce community, landowner and environmental impacts.

• What gives you confidence the sector can navigate the scale of change ahead?

Well, I'm an optimist, and I truly believe we will be shown to have made a much better start on the transmission buildout than people may perceive.

Currently, transmission is often portrayed as the biggest constraint on the transition. 

While we’ve had our challenges, we are now making serious progress on the way to our goal of delivering the 2,500km of new transmission lines that are required. 

There's a lot of people that think we've got this infinite task. It's not infinite, and we are making enormous headway at pace.

I’m hoping that by early 2028, we will be able to say the buildout is 50% complete, and I wouldn’t be dreaming of that target if it was impossible to achieve. 

We are working to outrace the industry so that transmission will no longer be viewed as a handbrake on the transition.