Thousands of panels glinting in the sun stretch into the sea off Singapore, component of the land-scarce city-state’s push to develop floating solar farms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
It may possibly be one of the world’s smallest nations, but the prosperous monetary hub is amongst the greatest per capita carbon dioxide emitters in Asia.
And though authorities have been pushing to modify that, renewable power is a challenge in a nation with no rivers for hydro-electrical energy and exactly where the wind is not robust adequate to energy turbines.
So the tropical nation turned to solar energy — nonetheless, with tiny land space in a location half the size of Los Angeles, it has resorted to setting up power plants off its coasts and on reservoirs.
“After exhausting the rooftops and the available land, which is very scarce, the next big potential is actually our water area,” stated Jen Tan, senior vice president and head of solar in Southeast Asia at conglomerate Sembcorp Industries, which is creating a project.
An island-state threatened by increasing sea levels mainly because of climate modify, Singapore is conscious of the urgency of cutting emissions, despite the fact that critics say authorities’ environmental commitments have therefore far fallen brief.
The government final month unveiled a wide-ranging “green plan” that incorporated measures such as planting more trees, decreasing the quantity of waste sent to landfills and creating more charging points to encourage the use of electric vehicles.
Among the measures is escalating solar power use 4-fold to about two % of the nation’s energy wants by 2025, and to 3 % by 2030 — adequate for 350,000 households per year.
As properly as on water, solar energy plants have currently been constructed on rooftops and on the ground.
‘New frontier’
One newly constructed solar farm spreads out from the coast into the Johor Strait, which separates Singapore from Malaysia.
The 13,000 panels are anchored to the seabed and can make 5 megawatts of electrical energy, adequate to energy 1,400 flats for an whole year.
“The sea is a new frontier for solar to be installed,” stated Shawn Tan, vice president for engineering at Singaporean firm Sunseap Group, which completed the project in January.
“We hope that this will set a precedent to have more floating projects in the sea in Singapore and neighbouring countries.”
Under improvement at Tengeh Reservoir is a far larger project — after completed later this year, the 122,000-panel solar farm will be one of the greatest in Southeast Asia covering an location the size of 45 football pitches.
The project, created by Sembcorp and the national water agency Public Utilities Board, will produce adequate energy to meet the power wants of Singapore’s water therapy plants, stated the agency’s senior planner Sharon Zheng.
This will lead to a reduction in carbon emissions equivalent to removing 7,000 vehicles from the roads.
The solar panels are imported from China, the world’s biggest manufacturer of the technologies, and anchored to the floor of the reservoir with blocks of concrete.
‘Insufficient’ targets
But the maritime hub could even face some space constraints when it comes to floating solar, stated Subhod Mhaisalkar, executive director of the Energy Research Institute at the city-state’s Nanyang Technological University.
“Do you use the ocean waters for deploying solar, or do you use it for shipping?” he told AFP.
And regardless of the push for green energy, the city-state will struggle to wean itself off a reliance on climate-damaging all-natural gas, and to reduce emissions without having impacting its refining and petrochemical sectors.
In addition, projects such as floating solar farms are not adequate unless backed up with a higher official commitment to reduce emissions, stated Red Constantino, executive director of the Philippines-based Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities.
Singapore has pledged to halve its 2030 peak greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and obtain net zero emissions “as soon as viable” in the second half of the century.
But this is behind other created economies, and the Climate Action Tracker, which tracks governments’ commitments, has classified its targets as “highly insufficient”.
Singapore is not performing its “fair share”, Constantino told AFP, adding the solar farms risked becoming “mere bling” unless the government moved more quickly.
“They need to set a higher absolute target. Such a target sends a signal to the very business community by which Singapore’s economy thrives.”