Billionaires’ Dreams of Green Energy Exports Will Never Work
Two of Australia’s richest men have ambitious visions for renewables, but they face some serious hurdles.
Booming investment.
Photographer: David Gray/BloombergBillionaires are not known for doing things by half. When Elon Musk set up a battery plant, he billed it a “Gigafactory” and made unfulfilled promises that it would be powered entirely by its own renewable generators. When Roman Abramovich bought himself a yacht, it was a battleship-sized monster with two helipads and its own submarine.
The temptation to go big or go home applies in Australia as much as anywhere else. Two of the country’s richest men, iron ore billionaire Andrew Forrest and Atlassian Corp. software mogul Mike Cannon-Brookes, have spent years working up plans for a renewable project in the country’s far north that is a veritable thicket of superlatives — A$30 billion ($20 billion) to build the world’s largest solar power plant, backed up by the world’s largest battery, supplying Singapore with electricity via the world’s largest and deepest submarine power cable.