Singapore unveils S$5.3 billion five-year plan to expand power grid and boost low-carbon energy

Singapore’s Energy Market Authority (EMA) released a five-year roadmap on Monday, outlining a S$5.3 billion programme to expand the power grid and diversify the country’s energy mix as electricity demand rises with economic growth.

Minister for Energy, Trade and Industry Tan See Leng said the upgrades are essential for attracting electricity-intensive investments such as semiconductor factories and data centres, adding that “the fastest megawatt will be the winning megawatt.”

The plan calls for seven new substations by 2031, an 18 percent increase in transmission cables to 9,100 km by 2030, and a study into tripling the length of underground cable tunnels to speed future expansions. Energy storage capacity is also set to triple to over 1 GWh by 2030, with EMA seeking industry proposals for scalable storage technologies.

Five additional natural-gas power plants will come online over the next five years, expanding generation capacity by about 26 percent. EMA is reviewing further proposals for plants that could be operational by 2032, and is preparing to increase LNG regasification capacity to 15 million tonnes per year when a second terminal at Jurong Port is completed.

To advance low-carbon pathways, Singapore aims to raise solar capacity to 4 GWp by 2035, up from the current 2.3 GWp, and has secured conditional approval for importing 1.3 GW of offshore wind from Vietnam and solar power from Malaysia. A S$75 million fund will support research into hydrogen, solar and biomass solutions, complementing a broader S$800 million low-carbon innovation programme.

The government is also exploring nuclear and geothermal options. Training schemes are being rolled out to develop local nuclear expertise, while a feasibility study by a Surbana Jurong-GLJ consortium will assess the potential of deep-underground geothermal power, though deployment is acknowledged to be a long-term prospect.