Live news updates: Saudi Arabia to spend over $5bn on social security and stockpiling reserves

Live news updates: Saudi Arabia to spend over $5bn on social security and stockpiling reserves

Australian energy start-up Sun Cable has hired investment banks Macquarie and Moelis to raise more than A$30bn (US$20.6bn) over the next 18 months to fund a giant solar farm and the world’s longest undersea power cable.

It will be the first time an Australian mega-renewables project worth tens of billions of dollars goes to capital markets, and will test the claim touted by many, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, that Australia can be a major clean energy exporter.

Sun Cable plans to build about 20 gigawatts of solar capacity and 40 gigawatt hours of battery storage in remote northern Australia and a 4,200km undersea cable to Singapore.When complete chief executive David Griffin said the cable would be by far the longest undersea power line in the world, dwarfing the 720km North Sea Link, which connects the UK and Norway.The project’s viability relies on being granted a licence by Singapore’s Energy Market Authority, which has called for tenders from clean energy producers to supply 4 gigawatts of continuous reliable supply to the city state by 2035.Sun Cable wants to supply half of that energy but is likely to face competition from south-east Asian power producers. In the first round of bids, in which