Page 5 - AsiaElec Week 43

AsiaElec COMMENTARY AsiaElec
GWh of battery storage and a 3,800-km under- sea cable to Singapore.
The company intends to take a 20% share of the Singapore market by providing 3 GW to the island nation. The rest of Sun Cable’s 10-GW potential will be used domestically in Australia.
Developer Sun Cable expects to have started community consultations in Australia in 2019.
Griffin said in Singapore last week that the company also aimed to send a draft notice of intent to the Northern Territory Environmen- tal Protection Authority in December, formally beginning the environmental approvals process.
The company said that it had carried out an initial desktop subsea survey of the pipeline route from Darwin to Singapore, and was seek- ing to start actual subsea survey work in 2020.
The Northern Territory’s government has awarded Major Project Status for Sun Cable.
“We have the guaranteed cloud-free days, the land and a government with the vision, plan and will to make it happen. Major Project Status for Sun Cable is an important step towards making this vision a reality. The Sun Cable project is a game-changer for the Territory and will further our reputation around the world as a place to do business and invest,” said Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner.
Wider markets
Earlier this year, Australia’s Beyond Zero Emis- sions, a think-tank, issued a report highlighting the Northern Territory’s ability to provide 10 GW of solar capacity that could be exported to South-East Asia by 2030.
In Western Australia, Macquarie Group has backed the 11-GW Asian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH) project, which is designed to export both to South-East Asia and to the Perth region.
North Queensland is also keen to exploit Australia’s solar export potential and proxim- ity to Asia. A recent report by the Smart Energy Council, which represents the country’s solar and battery storage industries, claimed that the region offered A$15bn ($10bn) of investment opportunities in renewables.
However, it called on the Queensland govern- ment to offer support similar to the federal Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) in order to overcome the “significant financing challenges” of working in a region “financially disconnected from the country’s main capital centres.”
Across Australia, 14.7 GW of large-scale solar and wind projects worth A$20bn ($14bn) were under construction or had reached finan- cial close in 2018, 100% more than elsewhere in Australia, according to figures from the Clean Energy Council, Australia renewables energy trade body.
South-East Asia is keen to develop green energy, given that region’s reliance on fossil fuels for power generation and the need to reduce greenhouse emissions (GHG) to meet the Paris Accord climate targets.
The region needs to invest $210bn per year up till 2030 in order to fund the energy transition and to create a sustainable economy, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Singaporean government-backed Infrastructure Asia fund said in early October.
Liberalised market
Singapore’s liberalised power market has a num- ber of generators such as SembCorp Industries, Senoco Energy, Tuas Power and Pacific Light Power, and multiple retail suppliers.
Nevertheless, the government will be keen to decarbonise the economy and to reduce emis- sions. The country also experienced power cuts in 2018 and adding green energy will build the grid’s resilience and enhance security of supply.
Green energy is a popular way for competing retail operators to win market share with tariffs that are not reliant on price movement in the oil and gas market. Sun Cable’s Griffin has stressed that the company will be able to offer long-term, stable tariffs to customers.
The financing and engineering requirements are ambitious. The current longest subsea power cable is a mere 580km from Norway to the Netherlands, while the longest in development is the 1,520-km EuroAfrica Interconnector from Egypt to Cyprus and Greece.™
Week 43 29•October•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P5