Singapore has a power problem that no amount of rooftop solar will fix. The city-state generates about 95 per cent of its electricity from imported natural gas. It has little spare land for solar farms, no rivers for hydropower and not much wind. Every decarbonisation plan it writes is, in effect, a plan to import cleaner molecules or squeeze more energy out of very little space.
The latest instalment arrived on Monday. The Energy Market Authority (EMA) and the Advanced Energy and Decarbonisation Office (AEDO) launched a SGD75 million (US$59 million) Power Decarbonisation Funding Initiative to develop low-carbon technologies for the grid. It sits under the SGD800 million (US$627 million) Decarbonisation Grand Challenge, part of the Research, Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) 2030 plan announced in March.
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The money will fund laboratory research on early-stage technologies as well as test-bedding and pilots of more mature ones. It targets three areas: hydrogen and its derivatives, solar and biomass.
Hydrogen gets the hardest targets
Hydrogen carries the most demanding goals. The first is to let power plants switch from hydrogen-based fuels to backup fuels within 10 minutes while keeping combustion stable. A turbine burning hydrogen or ammonia cannot simply sputter when a shipment runs late. Grid operators need a fallback that kicks in before the lights go out.
The second is to shrink the health and safety buffer required around hydrogen facilities with a capacity of 1 million tonnes per annum of hydrogen equivalent. On an island where industrial land is rationed by the hectare, a smaller exclusion zone is a direct saving.
The third goal is the boldest. The initiative wants to bring the cost of extracting hydrogen to below a dollar per kilogram, through better energy efficiency, longer-lasting catalysts and revenue from valuable co-products. Singapore expects to import hydrogen in carrier forms such as ammonia rather than produce it at home. That makes the “cracking” step, which releases hydrogen from its carrier, the place where costs pile up.
The hardware is already arriving. Last Friday, Singapore broke ground on a SGD62.5 million (US$49 million) low-carbon testbed on Jurong Island, where Amogy will pilot ammonia cracking at up to one tonne of hydrogen a day. Whether cracking can ever get under a dollar a kilogram at commercial scale remains one of the energy transition’s open questions.
Solar on walls, not fields
With most rooftops and reservoirs spoken for, the solar targets focus on unconventional surfaces. The initiative wants structural costs cut by at least 15 per cent without compromising strength or waterproofing. This is the unglamorous engineering that decides whether panels end up on facades, sea walls and car parks, or stay in brochures.
It is also chasing next-generation photovoltaic modules with efficiency above 30 per cent, or lightweight and flexible designs. Either kind must survive Singapore’s heat and humidity with annual degradation below 1 per cent over at least 25 years.
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That is a tall order. Mainstream commercial silicon panels convert roughly 22 to 24 per cent of sunlight. Anything above 30 per cent today generally means tandem cells, which layer silicon with materials such as perovskite. Those cells remain largely lab-scale and are notoriously sensitive to moisture. Asking them to last a quarter of a century in the tropics is asking a lot, which is presumably why the government is paying for research rather than procurement.
The ash nobody wants
The biomass goal is narrow but practical. The initiative wants low-cost technologies that turn ash from different biomass feedstocks into useful products, at a processing cost below SGD50 (US$39) per tonne. Burning wood pellets or agricultural waste leaves residue. Singapore’s only landfill, Semakau, is projected to fill up by around 2035, so the country has little room to dump it.
Regional startups are already working on adjacent problems. Singapore’s Verta Bioenergy turns farm waste into coal-ready fuel for industrial boilers. Some investors argue that the region’s next climate unicorn may be built from agricultural residue. Ash is the less glamorous end of that value chain, but someone has to deal with it.
Read the DRIVE fine print
For founders, the most relevant part is the Decarbonisation Research for Industry, Ventures, and Enterprise (DRIVE) programme, which opened for applications on 23 October. SGD25 million (US$20 million) of the power initiative is reserved for industry-designed projects.
DRIVE flips the usual grant logic. Companies, including startups and technology providers, define the decarbonisation problem they want solved. They then work with Singapore’s public universities and research institutions to develop and co-fund solutions. The government covers up to 75 per cent of qualifying project costs, but that money goes to the public research performers, not to the company. The company puts in its own share.
That makes DRIVE less a startup grant than a subsidised research contract. For a well-capitalised corporate, it is a cheap way to rent a university lab. For a seed-stage climate founder, funding even a quarter of a multi-year research budget is a stretch. Climate capital promised to the region has been slow to actually arrive, and among Southeast Asia’s climate startups the cheques remain stubbornly small.
Hardware founders face the steepest climb. Climate finance has long struggled to back companies building in atoms rather than code. Those are precisely the companies a hydrogen-cracking or solar-materials challenge would attract.
A crowded week of announcements
The power initiative did not arrive alone. In the space of four days, Singapore also announced:
- a SGD143 million (US$112 million) industrial decarbonisation fund
- the Jurong Island testbed
- a renewed energy cooperation pact with Malaysia covering cross-border electricity trading and renewable energy certificates
The overlap can be hard to track. The Economic Development Board says up to S$100 million of the industrial fund is also earmarked for DRIVE. DRIVE therefore looks like an umbrella programme with separate pots for power and industry. Founders will want clarity on which pot their project falls into before they write a proposal.
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None of the targets comes with a deadline, and no baseline has been published against which progress can be measured. A sub-dollar hydrogen cost or a 30 per cent tropical solar panel is a worthy ambition. Without dates, it is difficult to hold anyone to it.
There is also a question of proportion. SGD75 million spread across turbine controls, safety engineering, catalyst chemistry, solar materials and ash recycling is a research budget, not an industrial policy. Singapore’s real decarbonisation bets remain imported electricity and imported hydrogen. Home-grown research buys option value, a hedge in case those imports prove slower or costlier than planned.
For startups, the opportunity is real but conditional. Those with a corporate partner, a clear technical problem and a quarter of the bill in hand will find DRIVE useful. Programmes such as Startupbootcamp’s Singapore sustainability cohort suggest the founder pipeline exists. Everyone else may find that Singapore has built a well-equipped lab, with an entry fee attached.
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