Gordon Jackson remembers the hype around Sun Cable.
"The world's biggest solar farm," is the pitch he recalls.
It was just a few years ago that Gordon, who owns a sub-contracting business in the outback town of Elliott, was helping the venture install a few dozen test PV panels at its proposed site, about 100 kilometres from his remote Northern Territory community.
"It was pretty hot that day. About 47 degrees," Gordon recalls.
"It's sunny there, from sun-up to sundown."
But it turned out this sensational project was about more than sun.
It also needed a cable. And it is this feature that has now divided its two biggest backers, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest.
Australia's two richest men used to be partners on Sun Cable.
Now they are bidding against each other to control the collapsed entity, in a closed-door process that's just weeks away from culminating.
Sun Cable was formed in 2018 by several people, including its current chief executive David Griffin, based across Singapore and Australia.
It publicly unveiled its vision in 2019.
At the heart of the plan was an ambition to transform Australia, one of the world's biggest miners, into an exporter of renewable energy.
Sun Cable didn't just want to build a solar farm that was visible from space.
It also wanted to send much of the renewable power generated to the gas-dependent island nation of Singapore.
To do this, Sun Cable needed to install a big battery network and run a 4,700km transmission line from the Northern Territory's coastline all the way under the sea to its final destination.
"When it was announced, Sun Cable was a daring idea," Victoria University energy economist Bruce Mountain told ABC News.
And it needed a lot of money, starting at $30 billion.
With an estimated wealth almost matching this, Mike Cannon-Brookes was the first major backer to publicly sign up through his private entity, Grok Ventures.
At the time, the co-founder of software company Atlassian had just gained household fame for goading Tesla's Elon Musk into building Australia's biggest battery.
"I'm backing [Sun Cable]," Cannon-Brooks told the AFR back in 2019.
"We're going to make it work. I'm going to build a wire."
The even more wealthy Andrew Forrest came on a few months later, also through his private entity, Squadron.
In the media, the largest shareholder of iron ore exporter FMG described his investment in Sun Cable as motivated by "not just … reducing emissions" but "nation-building".
Project excites government and locals
Both the Northern Territory and then the federal government soon gave Sun Cable major project status.
In 2020, it revealed that its proposed solar farm site was at Newcastle Waters, one of eight cattle stations owned by Consolidated Pastoral Company.
There were headlines about jobs, including 1,750 during construction and 350 ongoing roles across the project's 70-year life span.
Elliott was the closest town to the proposed outback solar farm location.
With an official population of 287 people, most of them First Nations, the highway community has just one petrol station and a barricaded pub.
"We are struggling with work," traditional owner Bonita Farrall says.
"[Sun Cable] said they'd give courses for locals. Also jobs and accommodation."
This led to excitement from some locals.
"We hope Sun Cable goes ahead," the Barkly Regional Council's local Elliott authority chair, Bob Bagnall, says.
"It's good for the town."
By 2021, a firm based in the Northern Territory's capital was helping Sun Cable assess Newcastle Station for the land-clearing exercise required to lay down the 12,000 hectares of PV panels.
"It's dry, spinifex country," EcOz's owner Ray Hall says.
"There are threatened species in that part of the world, particularly bilbies. But bilby habitats are fairly easy to recognise."
Ray Hall describes Sun Cable's original proposal as "pretty adventurous and speculative".
There are a few white elephants in the great north, but Ray says he looked into Sun Cable and found its management "very professional".
He was also comforted by its two biggest backers.
"I think risk-takers are important in projects like this. [And] both of them are very wealthy and successful risk-takers."
Concerns raised about project's viability
Yet, even as EcOz was filing Sun Cable's environmental impact assessment in early 2022, cold water was being thrown on the project from some sectors of the energy community.
"I think there's a hard rump that are very sceptical about it all," says the director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre, Bruce Mountain.
The issues raised included the 4,700km sub-sea cable to Singapore.
It needed to wind its way through Indonesian waters, sometimes through magnetic sand and deep trenches. There was even concern raised about earthquakes.
"This is considerably beyond the current best practice in undersea cables," emeritus professor Andrew Blakers from ANU's Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems says.
He also notes that since Sun Cable was first proposed, other nations closer to Singapore have come on as viable energy suppliers, including Indonesia.
In Singapore, another energy expert still believes the wealthy island nation needs solar from a range of sources.
"Singapore has very close ties with Australia," the National University of Singapore's David Broadstock adds.
Sun Cable collapses into administration
In late 2022, the financial backing for Sun Cable was still there.
Cannon-Brookes and Forrest's entities helped raise $210 million capital to keep it going, which came with strings attached that the company met certain milestones.
Just a few months later, it collapsed.
At the time, Sun Cable's vague statement about its administration said it "followed the absence of alignment with the objectives of all shareholders".
It soon emerged there had been a disagreement between Forrest and Cannon-Brookes over the need to tip more money into the venture and the future of the project overall.
Cannon-Brooke's Grok Ventures maintained the project was still economically viable in its current form, and they had letters of intent from Singapore.
Squadron disagreed. Its chairman said the project was "not commercially viable in its current form", instead suggesting the solar would be better used to produce green hydrogen or ammonia.
As Sun Cable had been tracking along, Forrest had been getting more vocal about this alternative to battery-led renewable energy.
In a public lecture in 2021, he outlined his proposal to use solar, hydro and wind to make hydrogen, and then ultimately "green steel".
"I choose hydrogen. What do you choose?" he asked.
The ASX-listed FMG, which Forrest has a large stake in, is also now pursuing this strategy under its subsidiary, FFI.
Energy economist Bruce Mountain says the Sun Cable debacle highlights a clash of ideas about what to do with renewable energy.
"Clearly, there was a falling out, with Cannon-Brookes intending to see it to the end. And Forrest had the idea that he had an alternative use for the solar."
Is Sun Cable dead?
Sun Cable's administrator is now conducting a sale process.
So far, ABC News has confirmed at least four active bidders, including both Squadron and Grok. Neither would confirm any details of their plans for the project if they won control.
The buy-up process is confidential and final offers close on May 23.
In the interim, Grok Ventures has extended a loan of up to $65 million to Sun Cable to keep it afloat.
ABC News has also confirmed that numerous creditors have been approached by Squadron to buy up their debt, with a view that this might give help at some point in the sale process.
Between them, creditors are only owed about $13 million.
Guardian Geomatics, an Australian company that did the sub-sea cable survey for Sun Cable, is owed the vast majority, at $10 million.
EcOz is also owed $247,000.
Its director Ray Hall is hopeful the administration will be worked through.
"I see that as just an unfortunate sort of glitch along the way, with big personalities that had different ideas," he says.
There is a chance neither Squadron nor Grok will win, and a curve ball entity will emerge as its owner. It's understood that other parties bidding include offshore institutions. They may have entirely different ideas for the project's solar.
Both Australian energy experts that ABC News interviewed said it would be best going into our grid.
"We will need vast amounts of electricity to make hydrogen for chemicals," Andrew Blakers says.
"But that's not for the next seven or eight years.
"The number one priority is simply getting carbon out of our electricity grid, and then doubling the size of that electricity grid in order to service electric vehicles, electric heat pumps, and electric furnaces in the 2020s."
The town of Elliott and the nearby homeland community Marlinja are both powered off gas with backup diesel. Power bills are a concern as the cost of living rises.
"It feels unfair," says traditional owner Bonita Farrall, of the Sun Cable proposal.
"None of us have solar on our houses."
Final environmental approvals for the solar farm haven't been signed off, and traditional owners need to be consulted.
Sun Cable's administrator told ABC News the project has been "exploring" whether it can "help address electricity availability around the project area". The original proposal also gave some electricity to Darwin for major industry there.
Some in Elliott are not pinning their hopes on the project, including sub-contractor Gordon Jackson.
"It came to a halt, just like everything does in the middle of nowhere," he says.
Others, like the Barkly Regional Council's local authority chair for Elliott, Bob Bagnall, think it will happen. He doesn't mind in which capacity, but he does have a message for both Cannon-Brookes and Forrest.
"Get your act together. We just want to see it happen," he says.
"You know, a couple of multi-millionaires sitting back and arguing over which is the best way to go doesn't seem fit."
Story By: The Business /Emilia Terzon
Original story link: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-04/sun-cable-solar-andrew-twiggy-forrest-cannon-brookes-elliott/102295152
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