Australia-Asia PowerLink will deliver power generated from the world’s biggest solar farm in Australia to Singapore through overhead and undersea cables. The project, estimated to cost A$30 billion (US$22.4 billion), involves the development of a solar plant covering over 12,000 hectares in the town of Tennant Creek, approximately 990km from the town of Darwin. The harnessed renewable energy of 3GW is then transmitted to Darwin before being transferred to a 4,500km, 2.2GW undersea cable to Singapore via Indonesia. It is expected to supply its first batch of electricity to Darwin in 2026, and to Singapore in 2027, with full capacity in 2028. Additionally, a battery unit capable of storing between 36 and 42 Gigawatt hours will also be constructed on the solar panel field site to store excess energy. Once completed, the Australia-Asia PowerLink is expected to supply 15 percent of Singapore’s energy requirements. Currently, about 95 percent of the country’s electricity is produced from natural gas, which it imports from mainly Malaysia and Indonesia – Singapore is a country with very few natural resources.
The main driver of this growth is rising incomes, and rapid industrialization and urbanization. Countries in ASEAN saw huge migration from the countryside to urban areas over the last two decades as the regional shift from agriculture to industrialization began to take shape. As a result, 52 percent of the region’s population now lives in urban areas giving rise to new consumer spending on conveniences and technologies that have become an important part of modern society, such as automobile and air conditioner ownership. Faced with these pressures, regional governments have intensified their efforts to remove obstacles to energy investments and ensure energy deficits are not a hindrance to businesses. The Australia-Asia PowerLink should be a wake-up call for ASEAN members to spur renewable energy investments, particularly since the region’s renewable energy potential goes beyond just solar energy.