When Fraser Thompson and his business partners asked software mogul Mike Cannon-Brookes for money to build Australia’s biggest solar farm and the world’s longest underwater power line to link it to Singapore, Cannon-Brookes, understandably, said their idea sounded absurd.
Thompson, a Rhodes scholar who formerly worked at McKinsey & Co before establishing a government advisory business in Singapore, points to his research with Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek. It identified a staggering $6.6 trillion of economic opportunities by 2030 from transitioning to a low-carbon green economy in the Asia-Pacific region alone.“But when I looked at it, only one-third was getting the focus,” he says.
The sun above Australia, on the other hand, is world-class, providing 58 million petajoules of solar radiation a year – enough to supply 10,000 times our total consumption.
With the launch of a new business, Cyan Ventures, he says he is determined to continue the push to reverse what he sees as Australian investors’ inherently greater focus on risks rather than opportunities when it comes to the energy transition, and has sights set on those remaining two-thirds of the $6.6 trillion “iceberg” of opportunity.