SINGAPORE – By 2028, Singapore could start to use biomethane, considered a lower-carbon option than the fossil gas the country traditionally uses, to help keep its lights on.
Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong announced on Oct 23 that three power generation companies - Keppel Energy, Sembcorp Utilities and Tuas Power Generation - have been appointed as aggregators to import and supply biomethane under a pilot.
The natural gas that is now used to generate 95 per cent of Singapore’s electricity comes from fossil fuels. But biomethane, which has a similar composition to it, is produced from organic materials such as food waste, agricultural waste, animal manure and sewage sludge.
This is why biomethane is sometimes considered a “renewable fuel”. Another advantage is that it can also be used within the existing natural gas infrastructure without costly retrofits.
The announcement was made by DPM Gan at the inaugural Singapore Industry Decarbonisation Forum.The event was hosted by the Economic Development Board (EDB) in partnership with the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and the Advanced Energy and Decarbonisation Office.
The office is Singapore’s national platform for coordinating and supporting the research, development, and demonstration of technologies to support Singapore’s decarbonisation goals.
During the event, a series of initiatives to help Singapore cut its carbon footprint was announced. Other than the biomethane import pilot, other announcements include a $143 million funding initiative to advance industrial decarbonisation.
Singapore aims to have its planet-warming emissions come down to net-zero by 2050.
Meeting this target will involve getting the more emissions-intensive sectors - including the power and industrial sectors - to reduce their carbon footprint. The new initiatives could help lower emissions from the power and industry sectors.
“Our industries account for around 65% of our emissions, including emissions from the electricity that they use,” said DPM Gan. “We cannot achieve net-zero by 2050 without reducing these emissions significantly.
He added that Singapore must also keep these industries competitive while decarbonising them.
To this end, investments made into lower-carbon technologies would involve researchers working closely with industry to develop solutions that meet its needs, prove that these can be scaled, and enable companies to deploy them.
On the power front, the generation companies will import biomethane of up to 300MW from regional and international sources under the pilot. This can meet the needs of around 600,000 HDB households.
The biomethane gas, or biomethane-derived electricity, will supply data centres and industrial manufacturers in Singapore. These are usually large emitters.
The Economic Development Board (EDB) said the biomethane initiative, which will run for 15 years, is the first of its kind in South-east Asia.
The appointment of the three firms is part of a regulatory sandbox, first announced in October 2025, to test out the commercial, regulatory and operational arrangements needed for biomethane imports. A regulatory sandbox is a controlled environment where firms can test new innovations under the supervision of a regulator.
The outcomes can help to shape the framework for the wider adoption of biomethane in the future, EDB added.
Reducing emissions from industry
The Republic is also committing $143 million to support the development and commercialisation of low-carbon technologies for industries, said DPM Gan, who is also the Minister for Trade and Industry (Trade).
Industrial activities that produce plenty of emissions include petrochemical production, refining and fuel combustion. There are currently few commercial solutions that can help bring down emissions from these activities.
EDB said the new Industry Decarbonisation Funding Initiative will focus on solutions in three areas.
These are carbon capture, which refers to the removal of carbon from tailpipe emissions instead of releasing it into the atmosphere, and carbon utilisation. This refers to taking the captured carbon and then using it in other process or turning into other products, such as concrete.
The third area entails other novel and emerging decarbonisation technologies, such as solutions to store carbon and ways to reduce non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions from industrial processes.
Of the $143 million, up to $100 million will be set aside for research and development initiated by companies, including start-ups and technology providers.
This effort, dubbed the Decarbonisation Research for Industry, Ventures and Enterprise (DRIVE), aims to spur partnerships between companies and research institutions, ensuring that studies done in these areas can have real-world outcomes.
The government will co-fund up to 75% of qualify project costs and applications are open on Oct 23.
Separately, a national facility that will allow companies to test and scale emerging low-carbon technologies for industrial use also broke ground at Jurong Island on Oct 23.
Its first users will be Amogy, IHI Corporation and Metha8 — firms that are developing novel technologies spanning carbon utilisation and low-carbon hydrogen.
The $62 million Low-Carbon Technology Translational Testbed will provide modular and configurable facilities to support the development and testing of carbon utilisation and hydrogen technologies under industry-relevant conditions.
Companies can access shared infrastructure, utilities, permits and licences to set up pilots, and move faster from technology development to testing and scale-up.
The facility will be hosted at the A*STAR ISCE2.
By working with A*STAR, Amogy will work on producing hydrogen from ammonia, IHI on converting carbon dioxide into sustainable aviation fuel and Metha8 on an integrated system that converts methanol to power, said DPM Gan.
“Promising technologies that work in the lab must still prove they can operate reliably under demanding industrial conditions,” said A*STAR’s assistant chief executive of the Science & Engineering Research Council Lim Keng Hui.
“LCT3 gives researchers and companies the infrastructure and operating environment to do this without building a facility from scratch.”