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a two-lane highway that slices through desert scrub,
sits the proposed site of what could be the world’s larg-
est solar farm. The $22 billion Sun Cable project would
generate 17 to 20 gigawatts of solar power, equivalent
to about 30% of what Australia’s current grids can de-
liver. But the project is not meant to help power Frank’s
home, and it won’t alleviate the crippling energy pov-
erty faced by many Aboriginal communities across Aus-
tralia’s vast interior. The electricity it generates will be
sent to Darwin, the capital and largest city of the North-
ern Territory, and to Singapore, via a 2,600-mile under-
sea cable. This isn’t a new phenomenon. Extractive in-
dustries like mineral mining and fossil fuels have made
Australia one of the richest countries in the world, but
that wealth has accrued unequally, often bypassing the
people who live on the land that is exploited.
For the world to reach net-zero emissions, solar
panels and wind turbines will need to cover great
expanses of the earth, and the extraction of minerals like
lithium, crucial for the batteries that store power, will
need to rise exponentially. All of this will require vast
swaths of undeveloped land, which includes territories
around the globe under the ownership or stewardship
of Indigenous people.
In Australia, advocates and activists hope that the re-
newable push will be an opportunity to reset a histori-
cally toxic relationship between many Aboriginal com-
munities and large-scale developers building on their
land, and to address the need for more affordable en-
ergy, especially as climate change pushes temperatures
to extremes. Whether Australia can transform itself into
a renewable- energy superpower will also be crucial forPHOTOGRAPHS BY ANEETA BHOLE