Speaking at the Asian Clean Energy Summit in Singapore on October 22, Singapore’s Second Minister for Trade and Industry, Tan See Leng (陳詩龍), talked about the island state’s plans to import green energy from a massive solar farm via a 4,300km subsea transmission cable . It will be built in Darwin, Australia.

The cost of the project, which was given the green light by Singapore and given an environmental impact assessment permit by Australia in July this year, will cost 24 billion US dollars and its supply will start after 2035.

Approximately US$170 million has been invested in the project over the past three years, and contractor Sun Cable has completed subsea exploration on approximately 70 percent of the route.

Despite the extremely ambitious nature of the project, it looks set to move forward. It’s needed: Singapore generates more than 94 percent of its electricity from natural gas but is looking for ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and diversify its energy imports.

Economy Minister JW Kuo (郭智輝) was roundly criticized when he said he was considering building a green power plant on the Philippine island of Luzon, which is only 300km away compared to the 4,300km between Singapore and Darwin.

It was right for Kuo to backtrack on the plan, but not for the reasons stated by his critics.

To achieve its net zero carbon target by 2050, the government needs to think creatively about how to meet the demands of the country’s energy mix and replace carbon emissions with green energy sources, especially when it comes to eliminating nuclear power. More comprehensive development before openly considering these would be a preferable approach, but there are more important national security concerns, such as relying on vulnerable undersea cables as a source of energy.

To be fair, Kuo apologized to lawmakers when asked about the proposal and said the proposal was still in the discussion phase and no concrete plans had been prepared yet.

Sun Cable’s Australia-Asia Power Link project is indeed ambitious and 300km seems trivial in comparison, but there are significant challenges to overcome before such a project is considered feasible.

Opposition legislators seized the opportunity to call this proposal an admission that the government’s assurances of adequate energy supply were bogus, but were deliberately missing the salient point to score political ones: This is not about inadequate power supply, but about increasing sustainable energy. proportion of the energy mix and increasing demand for artificial intelligence in anticipation of 2050.

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Member of Parliament Lin Tai-hua (林岱樺), a lawmaker from the ruling party, expressed some concerns, saying that the Bashi Channel between Taiwan and the Philippines is as deep as 3,000 meters with undersea canyons. It would be very difficult.

The former Chinese Nationalist Party said it would make more sense to build a wind farm on Pingtan Island (平潭島), just 160 km away, and would only require laying cables under the Taiwan Strait, which is only 30 meters deep in some parts. (KMT) legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元) wrote on Facebook.

Tsai was probably being provocative with this suggestion, as Pingtan Island is in Chinese-controlled Fujian Province and a DPP government would be unlikely to consider such a suggestion. Still, he touched on the most thorny issue with Kuo’s undersea transmission cable plan: the national security angle.

Submarine cables are vulnerable to interference or destruction by hostile forces in the region, and the government must be very careful about implementing any plans that would leave Taiwan’s energy supplies open to attack by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.