Singapore and Vietnam have signed a letter of intent (LOI) to enhance collaboration on cross-border electricity trade for the Asean power grid.
Under the LOI, the countries will explore raising the targeted capacity of low-carbon electricity imports from Vietnam to Singapore to around 2GW by 2035, announced Singapore's Ministry of Trade and Industry on 26 March.
This builds on the previous conditional approval that was granted by Singapore's Energy Market Authority to Sembcorp Utilities in October 2023 to import 1.2GW of low-carbon electricity from Vietnam. The electricity will be transmitted from Vietnam to Singapore via new sub-sea cables of around 1,000km.
The Vietnam and Singapore governments will continue to engage interested companies that have credible and commercially viable proposals, said MTI.
"This LOI reflects our enhanced level of ambition to support not just cross-border electricity trading between our two countries, but the broader development of a sustainable, inclusive and resilient Asean power grid," said Singapore's second minister for trade and industry Tan See Leng.
Singapore aims to import up to 6GW of low-carbon electricity by 2035, and has signed supply agreements with Malaysia, as well as granted conditional approvals to projects in Indonesia.
There have been steps toward the development of the long-awaited Asean power grid, which once established, could help the region source and share electricity regionally. The Lao PDR-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore power integration project (LTMS-PIP) will be enhanced under its second phase to double the capacity of electricity traded from 100MW to a maximum of 200MW, the EMA announced in September last year.
