Two Scenarios

The other two-thirds will have to come from within the country, as a mix of hard-to-replace natural gas, solar power, and potentially hydrogen, combined with carbon capture facilities. Solar power is the country’s only available source of renewable electricity, but it only represents a small fraction of the overall supply (630 MWp). Even with all of Singapore’s ingenuity in overcoming space concerns by using water bodies and any vacant space to install solar panels (last year Singapore inaugurated one of the world’s largest floating solar farms), the maximum solar deployment by 2030 will be 2 GWp.

To satisfy the country’s total 50 TWh plus total energy demand, Singapore will continue to rely on natural gas, and, when the technology becomes available, hydrogen. Hydrogen, as a low-carbon energy and transportation fuel, is being enthusiastically explored. The EDB has awarded S$55 million to 12 projects under its Low-Carbon Energy Research Funding initiative to support R&D in this space. The biggest challenge is to find economically viable ways to greenify hydrogen production (a process called electrolysis) by using renewable energy. Most hydrogen produced today comes from natural gas, but a greater body of research is looking at alternatives. Evonik, for instance, is developing an anion exchange membrane to make the electrolysis process cheaper.

All low-carbon alternatives explored, Singapore can also reconcile its natural gas dependency by focusing not just on energy sources with zero CO2, but also on ways to deal with unavoidable CO2. As a first step, increasing the energy efficiency of natural gas power plants could reduce CO2 by up to 10%, according to EMA. Carbon capture and sequestration technologies could then do the rest. On a small scale, companies can find creative ways to nullify their emissions. GashubUnited Utility, the first company to bring LNG cylinder distribution to Southeast Asia, came up with an idea to reutilize the CO2 coming out of its Jurong Island plant into a type of algae that acts as a carbon sink. “We came across Spiral Energy, an expert in the market that grows spirulina commercially, and together worked on a project to connect the CO2 generated from our gas engine to produce spirulina, which is a superfood with nutrition properties of significant importance to Singapore’s food security scene,” said Bentinck Ng, CEO, GashubUnited Utility.

Image courtesy of Advario

Larger-scale projects for CCUS development depend on similarly interesting partnerships and coalitions of unlikely partners willing to share their IP to jointly develop win-win solutions. One project to watch is Linde’s collaboration with Singapore LNG Corporation (SLNG) to study the feasibility of a CO2 liquefication and storage facility to capture and liquefy CO2 from the SLNG terminal. Ganapathy Swamy, managing director at Linde Singapore and head of onsite accounts at Linde ASEAN, thinks Singapore is the right place to apply this kind of technology, but not without partners coming together: “Linde has the technology to capture, compress and liquefy CO2, but the economics of this process is not straightforward. To eventually eliminate CO2, it has to be moved and stored either underground or under the sea. Such projects require a cluster approach whereby different elements – like a density of CO2 streams, collection points, and storage options – all come together.”

Globally, industrial gas company Air Products is driving multiple multi-billion-dollar projects in gasification, carbon capture, and hydrogen, including a gasification and power plant in Saudi Arabia, a net-zero hydrogen energy complex in Alberta and a coal-to-methanol plant in Indonesia: “No doubt, hydrogen is the fuel of the future. The technology is nascent and will require effort, but I expect improvements to happen rapidly in the next 10 years; the more hydrogen is applied, the more its sphere of applicability increases,” commented Velu Ramani, president at Air Products Southeast Asia.

Current global events, headlined by high inflation and a forewarned energy crisis, have acted as cautionary reminders that the over-dependence on imports from one country, but also the over-dependence on fossil fuels, comes at a risk. It is hard to tell whether these events will be good or bad for the energy transition. Without other energy alternatives, more investment will go into gas infrastructure projects, keeping fossil fuels longer in the energy mix. At the same time, the price crisis may also boost investments in renewables, as the price of traditional energy has exceeded that of solar power in some parts of the world. According to a report by International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), renewables were the world’s cheapest source of energy in 2020, but the rise in oil prices has also swelled the cost of renewables and bio-based fuels. The price of palm oil reached an all-times-high this year, a mark of green inflation.

Image courtesy of Advario