Sun Cable Taps Macquarie, Moelis To Raise $21 Billion To Fund World’s Longest Undersea Power Cable

Sun Cable—backed by Australian billionaires Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest—has appointed Macquarie Capital and Moelis & Co. as joint financial advisers to raise A$30 billion ($21 billion) to fund the construction of the world’s longest undersea power cable.

Dubbed the Australia-Asia PowerLink, the 4,200-kilometer undersea cable will deliver electricity generated by Sun Cable’s solar farm in Australia’s Northern Territory to Darwin by 2027 and to Singapore two years later.

“The Australia-Asia PowerLink is a long-term investment in energy resilience and decarbonization, at scale,” Sun Cable founder and CEO David Griffin said in a statement. “With generation, transmission, and storage technology that is proven across each interconnected aspect of the operation, we have the economies of scale needed to deliver zero emission dispatchable electricity with reliability and price stability.”

Forrest and Cannon-Brookes are the key backers of Sun Cable, which is constructing a solar farm in the deserts of Australia’s Northern Territory. The project is billed as the world’s largest solar electricity generating facility that aims to produce up to 20 gigawatts of electricity. It also includes a battery that can store as much as 42 gigawatt hours of electricity.

Cannon-Brookes—whose fortune comes mainly from his stake in Atlassian, a collaboration software company he cofounded—has been doubling down investments in renewable energy and other sustainable projects. He plans to invest a further A$1 billion into the sector on top of the A$1 billion he’s already invested through Grok Ventures. Cannon-Brookes and his wife Annie have pledged to donate A$500 million to nonprofits seeking to alleviate climate change.

Forrest—founder of nickel producer Minara Resources and iron ore miner Fortescue Metals Group—is regarded as Australia’s most generous billionaire, having donated A$655 million in 2019 to a variety of causes.