Zero-Carbon Energy for the Asia-Pacific

Greetings from the ANU Grand Challenges pitch night in Canberra.  Four teams are presenting their ideas. One will receive funding. The last is "Zero-Carbon Energy for the Asia-Pacific". This project proposes to capture solar and wind renewable energy on a large scale in north-west Australia, then export it to Asia.

The energy will be exported by undersea cables, as synthetic fuel in supertankers and as refined metal. The project has to work out how to negotiate with traditional owners of the land on which the energy will be collected, and with the nations the cables and tankers will need to transit.

One issue is that cables and supertankers of fuel make attractive targets for terrorists and nations. The tradition approach to such defence would involve UAVs and rapid reaction air and seaborne forces. However, this could also include the local community as part of the early warning system.