The benefits of an intercontinental energy grid

Imagine an Asian electricity grid anchored by China at one end and Australia on the other. The grid would carry and distribute hemispheric solar, geothermal, wind and wave energy. The vision is big. But so’s the problem of climate change.


The plan would entail building a 10,000-kilometer long electricity transmission system stretching from Beijing to the Great Australian Bight. Australian concentrating solar power, geothermal, wind and wave energy would flow northward. It would be joined by the harnessed geothermal power of Indonesia’s volcanoes. This torrent of Austro-Indonesian low emission energy would then wend its way across a wind farm-lined South China Sea to China. Or the transmission system could go by land through a Southeast Asia regional High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) power line paralleling existing power lines in Malaysia, Thailand and Laos.

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