Singapore is a small island short of natural resources and relies on imports for almost everything including water and energy. About 2,600 miles away is Australia, rich in natural resources and open space. Now, a billionaire tech founder wants to use some of Australia’s unused land mass to give Singapore access to a massive solar farm.
On Wednesday, the Australian government cleared the first phase of SunCable’s AAPowerlink project, which hopes to ship energy from a giant solar farm in Australia’s north to Singapore, via a 2,600-mile underwater cable. To put that length in context, the $13.5 billion project will require a cable that would cover almost the full east-west length of the continental U.S.
Tanya Plibersek, Australia’s environment minister, said SunCable’s project would meet growing demand for renewable energy, both domestically and internationally. “It will be the largest solar precinct in the world—and heralds Australia as the world leader in green energy,” she said.
SunCable hopes that the 12,000 hectare solar farm and battery storage facility will deliver up to 6 gigawatts of energy 24/7 to Singapore and the Australian city of Darwin.
The company says a final investment decision will come in 2027, and electricity supply will commence in the early 2030s.
SunCable will still need approval from both Singapore and Indonesia to carry out the project.
A turnaround for SunCable
Australia’s approval, which SunCable called a “vote of confidence,” is a turnaround for the company.
The project was first backed by two billionaires, iron-ore magnate Andrew Forrest and Atlassian cofounder Mike Cannon-Brookes. But the two disagreed about the project’s viability and future direction, and SunCable went into voluntary administration in January 2023.
Cannon-Brookes beat Forrest for control of the company; Grok Ventures, Cannon-Brookes’s private investment company, acquired SunCable in September 2023.
At the time, Cannon-Brookes called SunCable a “world-changing project” and argued that resource-rich Australia needed to end its reliance on coal. The tech billionaire is a climate change activist, an investor in renewable energy projects, and owner of a green philanthropic fund.
Cannon-Brookes, through Grok Ventures, owns an 11.3% stake in AGL Energy, making him the top shareholder in Australia’s largest energy company. He successfully lobbied against AGL’s plans to split into separate retail and power generation companies, which would have allowed the power firm’s coal plants to keep operating into the 2040s.
