Mike Cannon-Brookes steals our sunshine

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Australia’s endowment of renewable assets is about to go the way of resources, thanks to Mike Cannon-Brookes:

Australia’s biggest renewables project, SunCable, has won environmental approvals from the Albanese government, with the giant development in the Northern Territory set to produce enough power for three million homes.

Backed by tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, the Australia-Asia Power Link will be the biggest solar farm in Australia and generate up to four gigawatts of renewable energy.

The 12,000-hectare solar farm project is on a former pastoral station between Elliott and Tennant Creek. Environmental approvals include an 800km transmission line to Darwin and an underwater cable to the end of Australian waters.

Thanks to Albo’s catastrophic energy policies, east coast Aussie electricity prices are today comparable to those of energy-less Singapore.

So, why are we allowing Australian sunshine to be exported when we don’t even have enough power to power ourselves?

SunCable is the equivalent of 7-8% of Australia’s installed electricity capacity and because of the time difference, it could help alleviate peak east coast demand.

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Instead, it will make up one-third of Singaporean installed capacity and instantly decarbonise it, while carbon border taxes punish Australia.

Yet, if the 800km transmission line ran south instead of north, it would connect with the National Electricity Market.

Billionaires are already carving up Australian energy like prime backstrap, costing Aussies a fortune while trashing energy and industrial sovereignty.

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Gina is elbow-deep in the gas cartel. Twiggy is gaming LNG imports. There are coal barons everywhere.

Don’t let Mike Cannon-Brookes steal our sunshine as well!

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.