On 28 February 2021, billionaire tech entrepreneur Mike Cannon-Brookes won a major victory over fellow billionaire Andrew Forrest in the battle for control of the Sun Cable solar project. The project is based in the Northern Territory and will create Australia’s largest solar farm and a 3,750-mile undersea cable delivering renewable energy to Singapore.
Forrest had originally been chosen by the Northern Territory government to build the project in August 2019. However, Cannon-Brookes and his company, Atlassian, made a bid to take over the project earlier this year. After months of negotiations, the Northern Territory government finally approved Cannon-Brookes’ takeover, allowing him to move forward with developing Sun Cable.
The project is expected to be worth up to $20 billion and is expected to provide zero-emission energy to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in Australia and Singapore. It will also create hundreds of jobs in the Northern Territory in the coming years.