The world's largest renewable energy and transmission project has received key approval from government officials. The massive power link project will send Australian solar power to Singapore via 2,672 miles of undersea cables.
The AAPowerLink project is being led by SunCable, and will start by constructing a mammoth solar farm in Australia's Northern Territory to transmit around-the-clock clean power to Darwin, and also export "reliable, cost-competitive renewable energy" to Singapore.
The company, which was acquired by billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes last year, still has a number of dominos that need to fall into place before the project really gets going. These include negotiating land use with traditional owners, nailing down agreements with other bodies along the route and even actually financing the ambitious project.
If all goes according to plan, supply of the first clean electricity is estimated to start in the early 2030s.
Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder of software company Atlassian, clearly likes big bets. In a market raid in May 2022 on Australia's biggest polluter, energy utility AGL, Cannon-Brookes planned to block a demerger. Why? Because it threatened to hold back the closure of coal power plants. And he has generously threw $660 million at his objection to AGL's striking unambitious 2045 end date for burning coal. Five months later, thanks to his intervention and the election of a new green-centric government, Australia's dirtiest power plant - responsible for more than 3 percent of the country's emissions - was forced to shut a decade earlier than planned.
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