Made in Australia, used in Asia: Public acceptance and the cable controversy of Australia-Asia PowerLink, a remote solar megaproject

Abstract

To combat climate change, renewable energy projects must expand rapidly. This is increasingly achieved by expanding the size of projects. Through necessary changes in land use, very large projects increasingly trigger landscape-related and aesthetic concerns among the public, including competition with agricultural land and the transformation of familiar and traditional landscapes. More recently, solar megaprojects have been proposed in remote and sparsely populated locations. However, there is limited understanding of the public's level of acceptance and associated concerns for such megaprojects. We undertook an online survey (n = 2223) to assess the acceptance of a 12,000-ha large solar megafarm proposed for remote northern Australia, the Australia-Asia PowerLink project. We also assessed acceptance of associated infrastructure and of plans to export much of the energy to Asia via a 4200 km submarine cable. Although the proposed megafarm is double the size of any existing farm, public acceptance was very high, both of the farm itself (89 %) and the 800 km long overhead power lines required to transport the solar energy to its point of distribution (79 %). The level of acceptance was lower for the proposal to export most of the produced solar energy to a foreign country (54 %) and the construction of the submarine cable needed to do so (65 %). The results suggest concerns among the Australian public for distributional justice even if the rural location of the proposed solar farm is considered favourably.