Australia on Wednesday green-lit the construction of a 300MW solar and battery farm that would both supply electricity to Singapore, a project which the country refers to as the world’s largest solar power plant.
Construction cost
Regulators indicated green-light for US$24bn SunCable project that will supply power to three million homes in Australia’s distant north. The project, which will involve a series of panels, batteries, and a later cable connecting Australia with Singapore, is sponsored by the tech billionaire and climate change campaigner Mike Cannon-Brookes. ‘It will be the largest solar precinct in the world – and puts Australia on the map as the world’s renewable energy powerhouse,’ said Tanya Plibersek, Minister for the Environment. It is also hoped that energy production will start from 2030.
The project will cover an area of 12 000 hectares (29 650 acres) and supply four gigawatts of energy per hour for domestic uses. Another two gigawatts transmitted through undersea cable to Singapore will meet approximately 15% of demand of this Southeast Asian country. Batteries would be able to store about 40 gigawatts of power. The Reuters report quoting SunCable Australia managing director Cameron Garnsworthy remarked this was the approval as being a landmark in the project journey. Thus, numerous approval processes stay ongoing starting from Singapore’s energy market authority, the Indonesian government, and Australian Aboriginal.
Challenges
SunCable shall now redirect its endeavours towards the subsequent level of planning with the intention of moving the initiative further along the development process towards reaching a final investment decision with an aim to achieve the said goal by 2027,’ added Garnsworthy. – It is referred to now as the ‘clean energy powerhouse’ –Australia remains one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and gas today but has also suffered the ill-impacts of climate change ranging from heatwaves and floods to bushfires. While individuals in the country are some of the most proactive when it comes to installing household solar panels, a series of governments have been lackluster in their approach to renewables. The latest data from the government shows that in 2022, the renewables comprised 32% of Australia’s total electricity generation while the coal contributed only 47%.
Australia has over the last five years invested relatively well in solar and wind, however it has to double or triple that investment if it is to reach it’s trajectory towards 2050 net zero goal. He further said that by the year 2030, Australia will require about a hundred GW of solar and wind power – and the SunCable project will deliver only four of that capacity.
Significance
Amanda McKenzie, Climate Council’s chief executive stated that the new solar hub signified a strong shift in vision towards transforming Australia into a clean energy economy and that such projects were critical in ‘achieving affordable energy and cutting climate pollution. “As coal fired power stations close, Australia needs to move quicker on the supply of solar and storage from rooftop solar to utility scale,” she said. It would also be a major shift for Cannon-Brookes, who has moved from being the co-founder of a software firm, Atlassian, to investing in renewable energy, particularly as the latest major stakeholder in AGL Energy.
Dr Ken Baldwin, Director of the Energy Change Institute at the Australian National University said, ‘This is the first time that a country has attempted to export renewable electricity from solar and wind on such a scale’. ”Australia has some of the best solar and wind resources of any country, and as a result, is installing solar and wind at one of the fastest rates of any country in the world on a per capita basis,” he told AFP. However, Baldwin said that this momentum must be sustained, especially if Australia is to achieve the set net zero targets by the year 2050.
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