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Billionaire bets big on largest solar project ever proposed to deliver power across oceans: 'At the forefront of the clean energy transition' (www.thecooldown.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The world is on the cusp of an energy transformation that could make the Industrial Revolution look minor. Mike Cannon-Brookes is banking on the Land Down Under to be a major driver of that change.

The billionaire co-founder of software giant Atlassian plans for Australia, where he grew up, to become the hub for the two biggest renewable-energy projects ever. According to Bloomberg, the SunCable project will build a 20-gigawatt solar farm and a 4,300-kilometer undersea transmission cable, called the Australia-Asia PowerLink.

But even he acknowledges this $21 billion undertaking by SunCable is a "completely bats*** insane project." Still, it's the first step in a 10-step outline to move clean energy to Asia from one of the sunniest places on Earth. This cable would run along the bed of the Indian Ocean and feed Singapore's great demand for electricity.

Australia could produce 10,000 times more solar power than it consumes, as reported by Bloomberg, though it is a coal behemoth and exports more than any country besides Indonesia.

It will take governments, companies, the wealthy and powerful, and individuals to fully divest from such dirty energy sources, which are rapidly heating the planet and leading to more severe and frequent storms, wildfires, and other weather events.

Cannon-Brookes compared the energy transition to technology disruption, saying: "Everyone changed to a smartphone over a five-year period."

"Averting catastrophic climate change will require a similar rapid societal shift, including changing how energy is generated and delivered," Brian Kahn wrote. "In BloombergNEF's net-zero scenario, solar will be the world's largest source of clean energy by 2030. To get there will require building the equivalent of the world's largest solar farm every few days by the end of the decade."

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago (1 children)

No. I don't want one giant Billionaire-backed project. I want a million small scale projects backed by local communities.

[–] Porcupirate 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

I agree, but this billionaire can do what few communities can: invest in scale.

Overall I still think this is good news.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

I'm also for community solutions and I don't oppose this. The rich are unfortunately also part of the world, they should be utilized as much as anybody in this crisis. More so, arguably.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I'd describe my feelings around the current solar boom as cautiously positive with a good sprinkle of skepticism.

I'd like to see billionaires investing in education towards self-regulating communities. I'd like to see them heavily investing in funding coops, not buying up startups. Billionaires investing in renewables means more money in billionaire's pockets, because they will just sell the clean energy back to you for a profit while remaining the owners of everything and then some.

I'd carefully agree that more solar panels are good, but I've now lived through enough eco hypes to not have at least a few concerns. In the worst case we will now quickly and thoughtlessly plaster solar panels over hectares and hectares of useful farmland, important ecological reserves, and poor people's homes, just because line go up. And probably trash them all in ten years when maintaining them proves too costly, or the next hype comes along. In the best case we actually start polluting less and use the time we buy to seek for more energy-saving ways of living in general.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Oh my fuck, finally a rich person did something actually. I never thought I'd see the day.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

A billionaire tries to extract more money from the average citizen by supplying a basic human need and you love it 😂

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Idiot troll. This platform is rife with y'all. It's become an issue, frankly. Honestly worse about it than Reddit, which is super unexpected. Fact is that solar is one of the best green energy industries that exist. A person using their big money to help it, especially in an INTERNATIONAL manner like this, isn't a negative. We don't have a method of free perpetual energy if you didn't notice, because somebody fucking murdered Nikola Tesla and destroyed his research to this effect. Probably there's even further people that have tried and been murdered and erased. You can thank capitalism for that, which if you ever bothered to read, you would know I am fully opposed to.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Strange take. I'm not trolling

If a sociopath who has already extracted enough money for his own greed from society to have a catastrophic effect on the lives of ordinary people decides to invest in solar power, I'm going to be sceptical

As the yanks say, you do you

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Sure looks like a troll when you twist their words then laugh at them.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I wonder to what extent they can take advantage of the ocean liquid cooling the cables to increase transmission capabilities.

Edit: On further thought, I guess they don't want excess heat as that would increase losses, so while the cooling could be beneficial, preventing the heat in the first place would be better.