Keppel Bay Tower to be fully powered by renewable energy from 2020

FROM Jan 1, Keppel Bay Tower will become Singapore's first commercial building to be fully powered by renewable energy, said Keppel Corporation on Sunday. Keppel's property arm Keppel Land is the owner and operator of Keppel Bay Tower.

Some 400 sq m of solar panels will be installed on the roof of the 18-storey building and its six-storey podium block. When completed in the first quarter of 2020, this photovoltaic system is expected to have an annual energy yield of about 100,000 kwh.

Via its electricity retailer Keppel Electric, Keppel Land will also buy renewable energy certificates (RECs) - tradable green energy credits - for energy generated by solar panels installed in Keppel Offshore and Marine's yards in Singapore.

The solar panels and purchased RECs will result in a reduction of over 2,400 tonnes of carbon emissions a year, said Keppel Corporation.

These are part of continued efforts to make Keppel Bay Tower the first existing high-rise commercial building in Singapore to go "super low-energy". In 2018, the Building and Construction Authority of Singapore (BCA) gave Keppel Land a S$1.28 million grant to testbed new and emerging technologies to reduce the building's energy consumption and improve its energy efficiency by 20 per cent compared to other buildings with Green Mark Platinum certification, by June 2020.

Keppel is on track to meet its goal of reducing the annual energy consumption of Keppel Bay Tower to 115 kwh per sq m per annum by June 2020, down from its initial consumption of about 145 kwh per sq m per annum.

BCA chief executive officer Hugh Lim said that the Keppel Bay Tower efforts are a good example of how even existing large commercial buildings can achieve "super low energy" status by combining smart air-conditioning and lighting with integrated controls.

"We hope more building owners and industry players will be inspired to set new benchmarks for how we build and operate buildings - new and existing - contributing to the urgent task of mitigating climate change through super low energy buildings," he added.

Keppel Bay Tower is also working with tenants to adopt green leases and install energy-efficient lamps in offices without any additional capital investment, as well as helping them attain Green Mark certification.

Keppel Land is also seeking new solutions to further reduce the building's energy consumption to below 100 kwh per sq m per annum, which would result in Keppel Bay Tower being 50 per cent more energy efficient compared to typical office buildings in Singapore.

When all of Keppel Land's 83 Green Mark-awarded projects are fully completed, their total estimated reduction in energy consumption will be over 200 million kwh per annum, enough to power more than 38,000 homes in Singapore for one year, and translating to cost savings of about S$42 million annually.

Keppel Land chief executive officer Tan Swee Yiow said: "Keppel is committed to sustainability, both as a provider of solutions for sustainable urbanisation and as a responsible corporate citizen. We will continue to take proactive steps to enhance the environmental performance of our developments to build a more sustainable future for all our stakeholders."