Singapore and Japan signed an agreement on August 21 to deepen collaboration on carbon capture and storage (CCS), a climate solution that entails sucking up and locking away planet-warming carbon dioxide from polluting sources.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) said that the agreement was signed on the sidelines of the second Asia Zero Emission Community ministerial meeting in Jakarta, by Second Minister for Trade and Industry Tan See Leng and Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Ken Saito.

The agreement will facilitate knowledge exchange on best practices for cross-border carbon capture and storage, as well as the sharing of insights on CCS technologies.

“It will also pool together expertise and resources from Singapore and Japan to accelerate the adoption of CCS in the region,” said MTI.

Singapore has committed to boosting its research and development in CCS technologies, with plans to collaborate with Indonesia on a cross-border CCS project allowing Singapore companies to ship their carbon there for storage.

The authorities are also working with ExxonMobil and Shell to study the feasibility of aggregating CO₂ emissions in Singapore for storage in other countries. The industry consortium, known as S Hub, will also collaborate with regional partners to identify potential CO₂ storage sites.

S Hub has plans to develop a CCS project that can permanently store at least 2½ million tonnes of CO₂ a year by 2030.
 

Globally, CCS has been regarded as an important decarbonisation tool to mitigate the effects of global warming. The United Nations’ International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recognise it has an important role to play in helping the world to get to net zero emissions by 2050.

Experts whom The Straits Times (ST) spoke to said that Japan is a natural collaboration partner for Singapore, given that it also has similar interests in developing CCS capabilities to reduce emissions, and both have plans to export CO₂ to ASEAN states.

Ms Stephanie Chiang, a senior research analyst for carbon capture, utilisation and storage at energy market research and consultancy Wood Mackenzie, noted that Japan has an advantage in CO₂ capture technology, and is developing expertise in the shipping of liquefied CO₂.

The Japanese government has been calling for the use of CCS for industrial sectors where CO₂ emissions are unavoidable. It has set a goal of storing 120 million tonnes to 240 million tonnes of CO₂ by 2050, which is 10 per cent to 20 per cent of its current emissions.

Japan currently has at least nine CCS projects in the pipeline, five of which involve storing CO₂ domestically, in places such as Hokkaido, the Sea of Japan, Greater Tokyo and Kyushu.

Three of the remaining four projects will involve transporting CO₂ to Malaysia, and the last project will involve exporting CO₂ to an unspecified area in Oceania.
 

Wood MacKenzie forecasts that around 60 million tonnes of CO₂ could be shipped from Japan to regional storage sites in 2050, Ms Chiang said.

Like Singapore, Japan lacks domestic storage capacity and will have to rely on overseas storage solutions, she added.

“Japan’s technological expertise and learnings from developing these large-scale CCS hubs will benefit Singapore in its goal of storing 2.5 million tonnes of CO₂ a year from 2030 in geological formations overseas,” she added.

Mr Putra Adhiguna, the managing director of Energy Shift Institute, an energy finance think-tank that focuses on Asia’s green transition, said it makes sense for Japan, as a global leader in CCS tech adoption, to collaborate with Singapore as both countries have sizeable industrial sectors.

But the onus of ensuring that the CO₂ remains permanently trapped underground will fall on storage countries; therefore, the standards for these long-term liabilities must be robust, he told ST.

So the high standards observed in Japan and Singapore must also be applied to these storage countries, and “doing anything at a lower bar” should not be tolerated.

“This is especially important if the storage countries have a more lax regulatory environment,” Mr Putra said, adding: “Given the large sums of money in the CCS process, the expectations of investors, corporations and the public alike will be very high.”

Ms Chiang noted that it would also be crucial to establish agreements around measurement, monitoring, and verification protocols for the exported CO₂, along with cost-sharing and liabilities, as this would be critical to scaling cross-border CO₂ transport and storage.

“Japan is expected to be the largest CO₂ exporter in the Asia-Pacific and will be a key partner in setting the necessary standards,” she added.

Dr Victor Nian, co-founder and chief executive of the Centre for Strategic Energy and Resources, said ASEAN will need to consider harmonising national regulations and legislation related to cross-border CCS projects, to ensure compatibility in the approval and governing of these projects.

“A Singapore-Japan collaboration could help build a knowledge pool and a network of experts to collectively contribute to addressing those challenges,” he added.
 

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