ENERGY players today face an impasse in deploying low-carbon solutions, despite the immense interest around them to fix global warming. And the barriers go beyond the billions required, Chua Yong Hwee, managing director of new energy at Keppel Infrastructure, said.
Take utility-scale green hydrogen projects. Although ammonia is demonstrated to be an effective hydrogen carrier, there still isn’t a global price marker for it. Without a clear marker, it is hard to figure out how bankable a project is.
To fix this, the world needs first movers – but who will stand out? Chua presented this chain of thought at the DNV Singapore Energy Transition Conference on Monday (Sep 4), when asked at a panel discussion on why investments in low-carbon energy solutions are still not happening.
DNV is a Norwegian energy expertise and assurance provider that opened its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore in 2014.
Stressing that taking action is “not so straightforward”, Chua said such projects ar not similar to the Lao PDR-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project (PIP), which brought to fruition Singapore’s very first renewable energy imports.
The PIP, which imports up to 100 MW of renewable hydropower from Lao PDR to Singapore via Thailand and Malaysia using existing interconnections, requires “very little capital upfront”, as it relies on existing grids, he noted.
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