What could become the world’s largest solar farm – to be built across 47 square miles in Australia’s sunny outback – gained a government green light Aug. 21. That alone is good news for the climate. The $20 billion commercial project would provide enough electricity to power 3 million homes, helping to turn a major coal-mining country into a renewable energy superpower.
Yet the project by Australia’s SunCable company may be about more than clean electrons and a cooler planet. It would also help break a big barrier for expanding clean energy – national borders – and add to a new campaign among 11 Asian countries to cooperate on decarbonization.
Known as the Australia-Asia Power Link, the solar project aims to send at least a fifth of its power – with Indonesia’s permission – through a 2,670-mile subsea cable to Singapore. That island nation has far less land and fewer sunny days than Australia’s Northern Territory. A massive array of batteries would store the electricity for peak use.
“No country can go it alone, nor can governments by themselves make it happen,” said Singapore’s Lee Hsien Loong last year when he was prime minister. “When it comes to climate change, only by working together can we get to net zero.”
This example of a cross-regional energy grid will help Southeast Asia transition away from its high dependency on fossil fuels. And it is one more effort to ensure peace in a region beset by China’s maritime aggression, a civil war in Myanmar, and nuclear threats by North Korea.
“The confluence of geopolitical anxieties and uncertainties about growth prospects have sparked a surge of cooperative initiatives in the region,” wrote Watanabe Tetsuya, president of the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia, in the East Asia Forum.
The European Union – an icon in how to restore regional peace following devastating wars – started in a similar fashion. After World War II, France and Germany worked together with four other countries to set up a supranational body to govern the coal, steel, and iron industries. The European Coal and Steel Community planted the seed for the creation of the current 27-nation bloc that has become a global champion for rights, liberties – and clean energy.
In 2023, Japan launched a similar effort in collaboration around energy with Australia and nine Southeast Asian nations. Known as the Asia Zero Emission Community, it already has hundreds of carbon-reducing projects in the works.
As Europe has already shown, when countries pool resources and help integrate a region, it cools the passions of nationalism and keeps the peace. It might also help cool the planet.