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.”

  • Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

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

    • MercurySunrise@slrpnk.net
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      1 month ago

      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.

      • Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        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

        • Ithi
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          1 month ago

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