SINGAPORE Trends and Developments Contributed by: Adam Moncrieff, Karthik Kumar, Lynette Lim and Kelly Choo, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP 88 Market Street #47-03 CapitaSpring Singapore, 048948 Singapore Tel: +65 6990 8404 Email: adam.moncrieff@orrick.com Web: www.orrick.com
The Lay of the Land As a small, highly urbanised island city-state with limited natural resources, Singapore faces inherent constraints in deploying renewable energy at scale. It lacks land mass, wind corridors and hydroelectric potential enjoyed by larger countries. It has no coal, oil, gas or other hydrocarbon reserves or extensive geothermal resources. Imported natural gas conse- quently remains the backbone of Singapore’s power generation, historically accounting for approximately 95% of electricity output. Against this backdrop, and in view of ever-increasing energy demand (driven not least by the rising use of artificial intelligence and data centre growth), frequent energy and supply chain disruptions, and volatile price fluctuations, the Singapore government is focused on and actively diversifying the island nation’s energy supply mix. We explore some of these developments and initiatives below. Solar Solar is Singapore’s most viable renewable energy resource for electricity generation today. On 2 March 2026, Singapore’s Energy Market Author- ity (EMA) announced an increase in the national solar deployment target, to 3 GWp by 2030. This follows the country’s achievement of 2 GWp of installed solar capacity in 2025. The higher capacity is expected to generate enough clean power for approximately half a million households annually, marking a meaningful step in Singapore’s transition towards cleaner energy sources.
To reach this goal, the Singapore government intends to maximise solar installations on available rooftops, land and water spaces. The government is also exploring novel deployment methods, such as over- hang solar that could serve as shelters and canopies at open-air car parks. Alongside the anticipated accel- eration of government-led deployment programmes such as SolarNova and SolarRoof, this increased tar- get is likely to generate fresh opportunities for solar developers, EPC contractors and project investors across the value chain. Even with the raised target, solar is projected to realis- tically meet only around 10% of Singapore’s projected energy needs by 2050. The shortfall underscores the necessity of a broader supply mix encompassing cross-border low-carbon electricity imports, biom- ethane and hydrogen, as discussed in the sections that follow. Low-Carbon Electricity Imports Singapore has set a target of importing approximate- ly 6 GW of low-carbon electricity from the region by 2035, which would supply roughly one-third of its pro- jected energy needs. Because domestic renewable generation alone cannot sustain Singapore’s energy demands, tapping into the region’s more abundant renewable resources through cross-border intercon- nections is both economically rational and strategi- cally important. A key institutional development in this space was the establishment of Singapore Energy Interconnections (SGEI) in April 2025, a government-linked company tasked with development and operating cross-border
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