I found out yesterday that the Australian government has contributed $75M to fund the largest solar energy plant in the world, to be built near Mildura in north-west Victoria.

The plant will power something like 45,000 homes, and cost around $420M.

On LateLine last night, Tony Jones speculated to the minister for the environment that we could power our entire country with fewer than 200 of these plants, at a cost to taxpayers of around $13B.

This really sparked my imagination. Imagine if the entire country were powered by solar plants. We could still invest in nuclear, geothermal and hydroelectric power, but it would all be surplus energy for us. Then we export that energy in the form of chemical batteries or hydrogen fuel cells.

Australia could become the biggest exporter of power in the world.

Could it happen? Maybe. The minister last night dodged the question (as politicians so often do) about building a whole bunch of these plants, so who knows what he's thinking? It's an exciting prospect, anyway.