It's probably the most ridiculous development proposal I have ever got wind of. It won't result in the destruction of native forest, as so many industrial wind farms already have caused or will cause in the future, right down the east coast of Australia.
But what it will do is completely desecrate a whopping huge area of arid, regional Australia in the Northern Territory.
In fact, the energy company in question, SunCable, has TWO monolith solar farms on the drawing board for the NT, but the accompanying Guardian Australia article doesn't even name the "newest" proposed one, only the 12000 hectare one (holy shit - yes that big) which it has gained "approval" from traditional owners, on the Powell Creek station.
But it does make reference to the "newest" as requiring the clearing of 50000 hectares of land. Let that sink in - 50000 hectares.
Obviously the NORTHERN LAND COUNCIL and First Nations traditional owners in question don't give a fuck about their own land, their history or their culture, or the ENVIRONMENT in general.
You wouldn't expect the bosses at SunCable to do so, but you would expect them to.
SunCable has made a "flim flam commitment" to "mitigate" the impacts of the 12000 hectare project at Powell Creek on very vulnerable greater bilby colonies.
But the company's chief executive RYAN WILLEMSEN-BELL is talking like someone who doesn't give a rat's arse about the monumental geological impacts posed by the TWO projects, as well as how it could, and almost assuredly will, have a profoundly detrimental impact on water resources in a part of Australia where it's in critically short supply, most of the year.
What WILLEMSEN-BELL also hasn't mentioned is that if any "freak weather event" occurs which destroys or even just does great damage to only say 1 to 5 % of all the solar panels which his company wants to set up in the Northern Territory, it will poison the entire footprint of the solar farms, literally turning at least thousands of hectares of the outback in the NT into an industrial wasteland.
It definitely wouldn't be acceptable even if it was to generate critically needed baseload energy for Australian homes and manufacturing industries.
SunCable is proposing this lunacy to power AI data centres and facilitate AI infrastructure. SunCable can FO just like AI can.
If the Lia Finocchiaro Country Liberal government in the Northern Territory doesn't side with common sense and the elemental statutes of environmental guardianship to knock all of SunCable's plans on the head, the Albanese government must step in and do so. In the NATIONAL INTEREST.
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