Singapore receives interest from Malaysian firms to export renewable energy through second interconnector
For the city-state to achieve its net-zero carbon emissions target by 2050, the Asean Power Grid’s success is crucial
[SINGAPORE] Singapore’s energy regulator has received considerable interest from companies in Malaysia to develop renewable energy projects to export low-carbon electricity, said Faith Gan, director of the energy connections office at the Energy Market Authority. She added that this would be through a new proposed interconnector between the two countries.
She was speaking at a panel on Wednesday (Oct 29) at Singapore International Energy Week, but did not provide more details on the companies that have expressed interest.
This comes less than two weeks after both countries announced that they will conduct detailed feasibility studies to build a second electricity interconnector, which could provide up to 2 gigawatts in capacity.
A company set up by the government to develop and operate cross-border electricity links, Singapore Energy Interconnections (SGEI), as well as utilities players SP Group and Tenaga Nasional, have signed a joint development agreement to carry out these studies.
The current and only interconnector between Singapore and Malaysia was set up in 1983, and is part of the transmission network of the Laos-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore power integration project that transports up to 200 megawatts of electricity.
It was the first cross-border project that brought Singapore its first imports of clean energy.
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The Asean Power Grid – which has been discussed for at least the last two decades – dominated conversations at this year’s Singapore International Energy Week.
The success of the Asean Power Grid is crucial to Singapore achieving its net-zero carbon emissions target by 2050, as the city-state has limited renewable energy resources. It is also dependent on importing low-carbon electricity from its neighbours through the regional grid.
However, Gan said that the Asean Power Grid is not just about helping Singapore decarbonise, but also about strengthening resilience in the region’s power system.
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She cited how power blackouts in Spain and Portugal – two countries heavily reliant on renewables – earlier this year were resolved relatively quickly because of their interconnection with the rest of the European Union.
“We are not only sharing electrons... we are also sharing stability,” she added.
At another panel, Associate Professor Lisa Sachs, director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment at Columbia University, said she has observed increasing recognition among Asean governments that developing the Asean Power Grid is the only path for the region to meet its rapidly growing energy demand in “the most reliable, resilient, secure, affordable and competitive way”.
She has been working with the Asean Centre for Energy to support modelling the regional grid as an investable, integrated energy system.
“That’s even more evident (in), and made even more feasible by, the growth of the industrial sectors in the region – the rapidly growing data centres and digital infrastructure, the mineral-based industrial orders, the growth of low-carbon fuel if each of those sectors requires access to abundant, reliable low-carbon energy,” she added.
The Asean Centre for Energy was formally mandated as the secretariat of the Asean Power Grid at a recent meeting between the region’s energy ministers, held less than two weeks before the 47th Asean Summit, which concluded on Oct 28.
This means that there is a unified governance structure that ensures coherence between policy and technical and regulatory action. At the same time, there is a single entity coordinating the development of the power grid, said Beni Suryadi, senior manager of the Asean plan of action for energy cooperation and strategic partnership at the Asean Centre for Energy.
Speaking at the same panel as Gan, he noted that regional interconnection is the most immediate and cost-effective lever to decarbonise the Asean power system.
“It allows us to pull renewables from resource-rich countries, aligns the variability across the border, and also displaces fossil generation while enhancing reliabilities.
“In short, the way we see an Asean perspective is it turns Asean’s diversity into a regional advantage, transforming an uneven resource into a shared strength of the region,” he added.
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