EnviroMission recently terminated a similar heads of agreement with Baulderstone competitor Leighton Contractors.

EnviroMission said any partnership with Baulderstone would require the construction company to help EnviroMission progress commercialisation of solar tower power stations in Australia.

Enviromission is planning a 1000 metre solar electricity plant for Mildura in Victoria.

If completed the building would become the world's tallest structure and would be visible from 100 kilometres away. The transparent solar collector at its base would be seven kilometres across.

It would work by heating air at the base - which would be about 30°C hotter than air at the top of the tower. The resulting convection force would create a powerful updraft, generating enough clean powerto service 200,000 houses, according to EnviroMission.

This energy output will represent an annual saving of more than 750,000 tonnes of greenhouse CO2 gases from entering the environment, the company said.

EnviroMission said the agreement needed to meet the objectives of EnviroMission’s application for funding under the federal Low Emission Technology Development Fund (LETDF).

Baulderstone will provide project design and costing to support EnviroMission’s business case and financial modelling for the application, for which it is already a registered applicant.

EnviroMission chief executive Roger Davey said significant progress on solar tower development was achieved under the heads of agreement with Leighton.

“However EnviroMission’s revised objective to meet a development timetable able to facilitate EnviroMission’s competitiveness and access to funding under the LETDF scheme had to be EnviroMission’s dominant strategic priority,” Davey said.

The collaboration with Baulderstone and financial adviser Macquarie Bank represented a new era in solar tower development, he claimed.