Local solar energy firm Sunseap Group has signed a long-term agreement with Amazon to export clean energy to the e-commerce giant through the national grid.
The 62 megawatt peak (MWp) of renewable energy, tapped from industrial landlord JTC's solar farms, will help Amazon meet its commitment to achieve 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030.
Sunseap was awarded one of two contracts under JTC's SolarLand phase three tender last year as part of JTC's efforts to make industrial estates more environ-mentally friendly.
Under the contract, Sunseap will install the solar systems on an estimated 40ha of temporary vacant land across Singapore. Unlike conventional fixed designs, these systems are modular and flexible, and can be redeployed when the land is needed for other uses.
Sunseap said the project will be the largest aggregated mobile solar system designed and installed in Singapore when completed next year.
The 62 MWp generated from the solar systesm will amount to 80 gigawatt hours (GWh) of clean energy annually - equivalent of powering more than 10,000 homes in Singapore. All the renewable energy generated by the plant will be supplied to Amazon.
Mr Lawrence Wu, co-founder and president of Sunseap Group, said Amazon has set a pace in sustainability that multinational corporations should follow. He added: "Sunseap has been a leader in rooftop installations and we are grateful for this opportunity to prove that we are equally adept at installing ground-mount systems."
Besides Singapore, Sunseap has projects in Australia, Vietnam, China, Taiwan and Cambodia.
Another example of green efforts in the corporate sector is UOB's U-Solar scheme, which has helped to generate nearly 160 GWh of solar power across Asean since its launch in October 2019.
This is akin to reducing more than 77,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions, or taking nearly 17,000 cars off the road for a year.
U-Solar is available in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. Through the programme, UOB offers businesses and consumers across South-east Asia a suite of financial solutions to encourage the development and adoption of solar power. These solutions include providing cash management and green financing to solar project developers, as well as end-to-end contract-based financing solutions to engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning (EPCC) contractors.
The U-Solar programme is part of the UOB Smart City Sustainable Finance Framework, which guides the bank's financing efforts to support the development of smart and sustainable cities regionally.
The bank has added three EPCC firms to its network of U-Solar partners in the past few months, bringing the total to 14 across the region.
Mr Frederick Chin, head of group wholesale banking and markets at UOB, said the pandemic has highlighted and accelerated the need to do more to protect and preserve the environment. "Through initiatives such as U-Solar, Asia's first solar industry ecosystem, we provide a platform that helps drive the development of the solar power industry and promotes the use of renewable energy," he said.
The bank said the U-Solar scheme will help to generate over 51,000 megawatt hours of solar power here, equal to about 4,600 cars being taken off the road for a year.
© 2021 Singapore Press Holdings
This article was written by Prisca Ang from The Straits Times and was legally licensed through the Industry Dive publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.
