Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party MLC Robert Borsak also weighed in, describing proposed pumped hydro schemes as "vanity projects" as he criticised Energy and Environment Minister Matt Kean, who he said had "stupidly ruled out gas, saying it has no future in NSW".

The two cross bench upper house members were among a host of speakers this week debating the Electricity Infrastructure Investment Bill introduced by Mr Kean in the lower house and voted through with the support of Labor and The Greens.

Labor's Adam Searles, the government leader in the upper house, said last night that the cross bench members could not defeat the legislation, which had opposition, government and Greens support.

The Hunter-Central Coast and Ilawarra regions were each added to the legislation in the lower house, formally recognising them as Renewable Energy Zones along with the three mandated in the original bill.

READ MORE: Muswellbrook aiming for pumped hydro project

One Nation and the Shooters have moved hundreds of amendments to the bill, which Greens MLC David Shoebridge said was a delaying tactic. He said pumped hydro was viable in Australia both physically and economically.

In the Legislative Council on Thursday, National Party MLC Ben Franklin outlined the government's reasons for introducing the legislation, saying "a large proportion" of the state's electricity infrastructure was "fast approaching the end of its technical life".

"There are three types of energy infrastructure identified by the experts as the lowest cost replacement for the NSW electricity system," Mr Franklin said.

"First, new transmission that supports the diversification of the grid to renewable-rich areas; second, renewable generation providing very low marginal cost energy to the system; and, third, long duration storage like pumped hydro and firming like gas and batteries providing dispatchable energy and other services to complement the intermittent nature of the renewables. "This suite for replacement infrastructure has high up-front capital costs and low ongoing marginal costs."

The government has said its Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap draws on work done by the federal regulator, the Australian Energy Market Operator, or AEMO.

But Mr Latham described it as "a centrally planned, command-and-control model" of the economic type he thought "went out with the fall of the Berlin Wall".

"We have to have the guarantee that the battery storage is viable and the pumped hydro firming is going to be feasible into the future," Mr Latham said.

"The Hon. Robert Borsak made a wonderfully devastating point that New South Wales has not built a dam for 33 years, yet the supposition of this bill with pumped hydro is that hundreds of dams will be built in the next decade," Mr Latham said.

"For pumped hydro one needs the dam at the top of the peak, the dam at the bottom and the pipes that are doing the pumping. We need two dams for every pumped hydro scheme when no dams have been built in 33 years."

Mr Latham said he had spoken to the academics whose work on pumped hydro underpins the government's policy, only to find they had not visited any of the 9000 sites they had proposed as "potential pumped hydro sites".

As the Herald has reported, off-river pumped hydro was promoted by Malcolm Turnbull during his time as prime minister, using research led by Dr Andrew Blakers from the Australian National University in Canberra.

Pumped hydro proposes using two adjacent dams, one higher than the other, as an energy storage system, with water to be pumped uphill so that it can be released again at night when solar cannot generate.

Dr Blakers has published papers identifying tens of thousands of potential sites in Australia, and more than 500,000 worldwide.

Mr Latham said he didn't "know whether to laugh or cry" about the legislation.

"He [Mr Kean] is relying on an ANU study that I critiqued three years ago that points to what is supposed to be 9000 potential pumped hydro sites in NSW that nobody has visited or inspected in person. It is another satellite mapping exercise."

Mr Latham said he had visited the sites in his area. One was a water tank for a community water supply and others were "dry gullies that would not have water running through them except in absolutely exceptional storms".

"How can you legislate for things you do not know," Mr Latham said.

Mr Borsak said Mr Kean and his "green coterie of advisers" were "seeking to destroy coal-fired power plants and insist that they be replaced with unreliable solar panels, windmills and batteries".

"This is juvenile zealotry at its best and, at its worst, another economic suicide note, written this time for the Liberal-Nationals rather than the usual suspects."

"There is no evidence at all that this so-called solution can indeed work or is cost-effective in practice," Mr Borsak said.

"This is juvenile zealotry at its best and, at its worst, another economic suicide note, written this time for the Liberal-Nationals rather than the usual suspects."

Asked about pumped hydro, Mr Shoebridge told the Herald last night that the Tumut 3 plant in the Snowy had "proven the viability of pumped hydro in the Australian market".

"It uses off peak coal electricity to pump up 150 metres and generates 1800 megawatts.

"The technology has moved in further since then and with very large overcapacity with a full renewable grid, then it is even more economically viable.

"There is no doubt that pumped hydro ends up being quite energy intensive but that is not the point where there is such a large over-capacity during peak energy production with a large scale renewable grid.

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