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The Climate Council applauds this week’s announcement of the green light for Australia’s largest solar farm as a “bold step in seizing the power of the sun to make Australia a clean energy powerhouse.”
The Sun Cable Australia-Asia Power Link, a 12,000-hectare solar farm in the Northern Territory, is poised to generate 4GW of renewable energy—enough to power three million homes.
Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie, said: “The Sun Cable project shines a light on the cleaner energy grid we’re building here and now, and is a bold step in seizing the power of the sun to make Australia a clean energy powerhouse.
“Already today 40 percent of the power in our main national grid is powered by reliable renewables. Major new projects like Sun Cable will keep driving up the dominance of solar and wind – delivering affordable energy and slashing climate pollution.
“With the closure of coal-fired power stations on the horizon, Australia needs to accelerate the roll out of solar and storage at every level—rooftops, large-scale projects, and everything in between.”
The Climate Council is Australia’s leading community-funded climate change communications organisation. We provide authoritative, expert and evidence-based advice on climate change to journalists, policymakers, and the wider Australian community.
At the announcement of Commonwealth approval for the project, Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek said: “It shows that the energy transition is real, it’s happening right now, and that in years to come Australia can be a renewable energy superpower generating cheaper, cleaner renewable energy for Australian households and Australian industries, creating jobs and bringing down prices in a way that’s great for the environment.
“This is a really exciting project, the scale of it is transformative for the Northern Territory and for Australia. But it’s also being done in a way that protects the natural environment as well.
“We’ve had a great relationship with the company that means that we’ll be able to avoid impacts on threatened and vulnerable species in the Northern Territory. You can do these enormous transformative projects in way that is nature positive.
“The contrast, of course, is Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy fantasy. In fact this project would generate enough energy to power seven nuclear reactors, and the contrast could not be sharper.
“Nuclear reactors will take decades to build, they’ll be expensive, there’s no realistic proposition of them happening any time soon, and instead we’ve got a project that’s got its environmental approvals and now will go into a phase of securing its financial backing.”
