Singapore embraces clean technologies

Weekend Australian
20 August 2011, Page: 8

WHILE Australia continues to haggle politically about how we intend to confront the issue of a cleaner energy future and whether we should lead or wait to follow, many of the world's largest corporations, such as GE and Schneider Electric, have decided to push on regardless. At the same time, Singapore has decided to lead and embrace clean technologies not just for its own future but to also position itself as a clean energy hub for business and innovation globally.

The Singapore government has heavily backed the clean technology industry in recent years with the goal of creating 18,000 jobs and generating $S3.4 billion (S2.7bn) towards the nation's GDP by 2015. According to the deputy CEO of the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore, Armin Aberle, this includes 7000 skilled jobs in the engineering sector within cleantech. German-born Aberle worked for more than a decade at the University of New South Wales in research and development before he was attracted to Singapore's strong emphasis on cleantech a couple of years ago.

He says the skilled jobs coming online in the clean energy sector which include solar power, fuel-cells, wind power, energy efficiency and carbon services offer excellent the opportunities for engineers and scientists. "Things are developing rapidly and the prospects of achieving the 2015 targets are good. Singapore is always interested in attracting and grooming global talent", Aberle says.

He says Southeast Asia is booming and poised to continue to do so for many years, largely as the result of an emerging well-off middle-class that drives demand for services and goods. "The fundamentals for manufacturing are also steadily improving in the region, and thus the prospects for continued growth are good. He says Singapore is a late starter in cleantech, but if the government sees the potential in an idea, things move quickly. "While four years ago the renewable energy sector in the country was almost non-existent, the cleantech sector is now a key pillar of the economic agenda.

Contact Singapore's executive director Ng Siew Kiang says that as "cleantech gains prominence and popularity on a global scale, we expect there will be more qualified professionals with the necessary skills who will not only fill these new jobs, but will also be catalysts who continue to drive the industry forward".

According to Aberle, SERIS is set up like a research company and needs to secure a large part of its annual budget from industry and via public R&D grants. As such, SERIS collaborates closely with industry and has been able to secure millions of dollars of research funding every year.

"We have attracted large contracts from industrial clients in Singapore, the Asia Pacific and Europe", he says. Collaborative work has included projects with the Norwegian company Renewable Energy Corporation, which operates a world-class integrated solar manufacturing plant in Singapore for the production of silicon wafers, solar cells and PV modules.

In one project, RECs set about further enhancing the efficiency of its silicon wafer solar cells with future-oriented processing technology and techniques together with the scientific support of SERIS. "As a result of the technical innovations from this R&D project, RECs also expects to achieve significant production cost reductions, which will help bring down solar module prices and speed up the development of solar markets", Aberle concludes.