The Borumba pumped‑hydro project in Queensland has been suspended, with procurement for tunnelling, drilling and earthworks halted at the $18.4 billion site south‑west of Gympie.

Queensland Treasurer and energy minister David Janetzki confirmed the pause to the Australian Financial Review, saying the project is under careful assessment after the former Labor government’s $36.8 billion “pumped hydro hoax” and the more than twenty‑fold cost escalation of the federal Snowy Hydro 2.0 scheme.

Borumba was slated to deliver 2,000 MW of generation and up to 48,000 MWh of storage – enough for 24 hours of full‑capacity output – making it one of Australia’s largest planned storage projects.

The pause follows Snowy Hydro’s latest reassessment on 22 October, which set a target cost of $22.2 billion for Snowy 2.0 and warned the figure could rise to $25 billion, far above the $2 billion price paid in 2017.

Queensland Hydro says exploratory works, geotechnical data collection and economic evaluations continue, with a full business case to be submitted to government in the 2026‑27 financial year to test whether the $18.4 billion budget passes a cost‑benefit threshold.

The project’s timeline has already slipped; Queensland Hydro disclosed in December 2024 that costs had ballooned from around $4 billion to over $18 billion and the first power generation window had shifted from 2030‑2035, with odds of meeting the original date estimated at less than 1 percent.

Despite the pause, the Queensland government has retained its commitment to the scheme, having secured federal environmental approval in December 2025 and allocated $324 million for early works in the state budget.

The Borumba pause is viewed as a signal rather than a routine administrative hold, reflecting broader concerns about the financial viability of large pumped‑hydro projects after the Snowy 2.0 cost surge.