Singapore continues talks with Australia’s Sun Cable, even with 4 GW of clean energy imports in the bag
SOME 20 companies including Asian and European energy giants, as well as Australia’s Sun Cable, still have a shot at snagging Singapore’s coveted import licence for clean energy, even though the city-state has hit its 4 gigawatt (GW) import target via conditional nods.
Singapore’s Energy Market Authority (EMA), which has been soliciting ideas to buy low-carbon electricity from the region and abroad for some three years now, said it remains open to engaging companies that submitted their plans under a process that closed in end-2023.
“We remain open to receiving good proposals... and to continue discussions with relevant governments. We will also continue our discussions with companies that have submitted proposals,” said an EMA spokesperson in response to The Business Times’ queries.
Some of the companies that have expressed interest to develop Singapore’s electricity import projects are big players in the energy and renewables space, based on information on EMA’s website.
They include proposals from British energy giant Shell; China’s State Grid Corporation of China and solar player Jinko Power; India’s wind and solar firm Hero Group; German solar developer Ib Vogt; and South Korea’s LS Electric and French energy group TotalEnergies.
Singapore’s major energy players Tuas Power, YTL Group, as well as Senoko Energy are also vying for a slice of the action.
The city-state’s open stance could also mean that Australian billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes’ audacious project to ship solar to Singapore through what will be the world’s largest undersea cable, may still be in the running.
These proposals were submitted under the EMA’s request for proposal (RFP) to meet the goal to import 4 GW of low-carbon electricity by 2035, which would by then account for 30 per cent of Singapore’s power supply. As it stands now, the Republic’s electricity supply is almost entirely generated by imported natural gas.
EMA said it was carefully evaluating these proposals, and will consider a range of factors, including price-competitiveness and source diversity when evaluating the proposals.
“As part of the RFP process, EMA has been in discussion with the companies which have submitted their proposals to import low-carbon electricity into Singapore, including Sun Cable.
“Singapore has not made any commitment, financial or otherwise, to the Sun Cable project. We are not able to provide more details due to commercial sensitivities.”
A spokesperson from Sun Cable told BT that the company submitted the final version of its proposal to EMA in September last year to gain conditional approval for for its flagship project Australia-Asia Power Link (AAPowerLink).
The company has described the project as “the world’s largest solar infrastructure network”. In an interview with BT last September, Cannon-Brookes said he was feeling “pretty bullish” about the project’s prospects.
Sun Cable’s spokesperson added that the company continues “to work collaboratively and positively with the regulator and their advisers throughout the assessment process”.
“To date, we have invested hundreds of millions of dollars across Indonesia, Singapore and Australia, in developing the AAPowerLink project and have earmarked significant capital investment to further progress development milestones in 2024.”
EMA has so far granted conditional approvals for the import of just over 4 GW of low-carbon electricity from its South-east Asian neighbours. These involve plans for 2 GW of electricity – mostly solar – from Indonesia and 1 GW of solar, hydropower and potentially wind from Cambodia.
The most recent conditional nod was awarded last October for the import of 1.2 GW of clean electricity from Vietnam, to be largely powered by offshore wind energy.
With this, Singapore’s goal to decarbonise its power sector – one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions at 40 per cent – appears right on track.
Given the good progress of the import initiative so far, Second Minister for Trade and Industry Tan See Leng had said that Singapore was studying the possibility of taking in more electricity import projects.
