Plan to send Vietnamese offshore wind power to Singapore progresses

Singapore wants to import up to 4GW of clean power from neighbours by 2035, as lack of available land in city-state hinders its own renewable energy build out

Marina Bay Sands, Singapore.
Marina Bay Sands, Singapore.Photo: Wikimedia Commons

An ambitious plan to build a 2.3GW offshore wind farm in Vietnam that will generate power to be sent to Singapore via a 1,000km subsea cable has taken its latest step as key contracts are handed out.

A PetroVietnam subsidiary held a ceremony with Sembcorp Industries in Singapore this week to award contracts to assess wind and metocean conditions and carry out a geotechnical survey for the project.

The execution of the contracts will “provide the foundational database for the engineering, construction, and operation of the offshore wind farm in Vietnam,” PetroVietnam Technical Services Corporation (PTSC) announced yesterday.

PTSC partnered with Singaporean state-owned energy and urban development company Sembcorp last year on the project to send 1.2GW of clean power from Vietnam to Singapore via a 1,000km subsea interconnector.

The Singaporean government has also granted its conditional approval for the project, which builds on a memorandum of understanding Singapore and Vietnam signed in 2022 on energy cooperation.

Singapore plans to import up to 4GW of clean power by 2035. To date, its energy ministry has also granted conditional approvals to plans to import 2GW of power from Indonesia and 1GW from Cambodia.

An Australian developer also wants to build what would be the world’s longest interconnector, 5,200km in total, to send 1.75GW of renewable energy from the Australian outback to Singapore.
Vietnam meanwhile is going through a turbulent period politically, with its wide-ranging "blazing furnace" anti-corruption probe having led to high-level arrests, while also impacting its renewables sector.
Equinor and Orsted both pulled out of Vietnam in the last year, having previously planned to develop some of its first offshore wind farms.
The World Bank last year tipped Vietnam as one of the hottest new offshore wind markets, after its 2021 roadmap for the country found it could have almost 25GW of capacity by 2035. It has set a target for 6GW of offshore wind by 2030.
(Copyright)
Published 30 August 2024, 09:16Updated 30 August 2024, 09:16
PetroVietnamSembcorp IndustriesVietnamSingaporeSouth East Asia