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The Australian government has given the green light to a plan to establish one of the world’s largest electric car recharging infrastructures, powered entirely by renewable energy.

The A$1 billion ($676 million) project could see the establishment of as many as two million recharging points, as well as more than 500 battery swap stations, where drivers can exchange depleted batteries without the need to wait for a recharge.

Australian utility AGL Energy has committed itself to supply enough energy from renewable sources to power all cars using the system. Responsibility for building the charging points goes to Shai Agassi’s Project Better Place, with financial backing from Macquarie Capital Group.

Project Better Place have a track record of setting up EV recharging systems, and are currently working on large-scale projects in Israel and Denmark. Agassi says that the Australian system will be around five times bigger than the Israeli one, where the company is already building 350,000 to 500,000 recharging points and teaming up with Renault-Nissan to supply electric cars.

One of the chief reasons for deciding upon Australia was an A$500m green car innovation fund, as well as strong backing from the Victoria state government. The work is scheduled for completion in 2012, by which time the consortium will have built EV charging stations across the densely populated east coast, as well as Perth in Western Australia.

Image Credit – Corey Leopold via flickr.com on a Creative Commons license