Singapore to start receiving and using green ammonia, hydrogen in 2026

The Republic will soon be able to further decarbonise its power supply by incorporating energy sources such as green ammonia and hydrogen.

From 2026, town gas in residential and commercial pipelines in Singapore – currently a mix of hydrogen and methane – could include a percentage of green hydrogen.

Alongside other heavy industries, the country’s shipping industry can also use green ammonia as fuel, which could give it a boost in meeting the International Maritime Organisation’s 2030 decarbonisation targets.

Green ammonia, which becomes liquid at minus 33 degrees Celsius, and green hydrogen gas are produced using electrolysers, which split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity.

Some supplies of these green gases – which do not emit carbon dioxide when used – will come from a three-way partnership between Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, Malaysian oil company Petronas’ renewable energy arm Gentari, and AM Green, which produces green ammonia and green hydrogen.

With the partnership, AM Green aims to export the clean energy from India to markets such as Singapore, Japan, and South Korea by 2026, and produce up to around one million tonnes of green hydrogen a year by 2030.

AM Green is a wholly owned subsidiary of Greenko Energy Holdings, which was founded in India in 2006 with the aim of replacing fossil fuels with sustainable and affordable energy.
 

It was reported that Petronas invested US$1.6 billion (S$2.2 billion) in the partnership. GIC, which is one of Greenko’s shareholders, declined comment on its investment when contacted by The Straits Times.

Mr Mahesh Kolli, Greenko’s president and joint managing director, said the company would first aim to make clean energy cheaper than coal or other fossil fuels before transporting it to markets such as Singapore, Europe, and other countries under the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

He said it might take a year or two before existing infrastructure is ready for Singapore to receive green ammonia.

This latest partnership, which was announced on Monday (30 Oct 2022), follows an earlier one between Greenko and Singapore’s Keppel Infrastructure in October 2022.

That partnership was to explore the development of a green ammonia production facility to produce at least 250,000 tonnes of the gas per year, and to evaluate a portfolio of solar and wind energy projects to power the production facility.

The size of Singapore’s green ammonia market in 2021 was at 60 tonnes, according to Statista. This is forecast to increase significantly to almost 18,000 tonnes by 2030.
 

Still, as much as green ammonia is heralded as the fuel of the future, using it at scale and on a regular basis will not be cheap.

It is nearly four times the cost of fossil fuel-based marine shipping fuels, for example, according to global commodity market specialists Argus. 

The highest monthly average price of green ammonia in September was US$804.65 per tonne, according to S&P Global.

Part of the high cost comes from the fact that providing and storing renewable energy on the grid is not completely carbon-free, as there is still a reliance on fossil fuels to support it.

Mr Kolli explained: “The technical opportunity and challenge around the world of renewable energy is that it is intermittent and not reliable. When you supply renewable energy to the power grid, solar power happens only six to eight hours a day. For the rest of the 16 hours, you need gas or coal energy to support it.”

To bring costs down, Greenko has made significant investments in energy storage and the manufacturing of electrolysers.

“That’s where we expanded on the idea of making renewable energy available 24/7, by combining our electrolysers with our energy storage. With this, you end up with this opportunity to make it low-cost,” added Mr Kolli. 

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