Singapore’s fifth desalination plant, a waste-tech startup accelerator and the first town centre with district cooling were among the announcements made at the Singapore International Water Week 2022 and CleanEnviro Summit Singapore 2022.

The Jurong Island Desalination Plant (JIDP) has a daily capacity of up to 137,000 cubic metres — the equivalent of 55 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water. It was officially opened on April 17.

Spanning over 3.7 hectares, or the size of five football fields, JIDP receives seawater from Tuas Power’s Tembusu Multi-Utilities Complex (TMUC), which it then processes into potable water.

According to operators, this makes the plant about 5% more energy efficient compared to conventional desalination plants, and the energy saved can power nearly 1,000 HDB households.

The consortium partners Tuas Power and ST Engineering have formed a joint venture company, TP-STM Water Resources, which will operate the plant for 25 years.

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The other four desalination plants in Singapore are the Singspring (opened in 2005), Tuas South (2013), Tuas (2018) and Marina East (2020) plants.

Staying cool in Tampines

Tampines will be Singapore’s first town centre to be retrofitted with an interconnected cooling solution, designed by SP Group. Seven existing buildings across the town centre will be retrofitted with distributed district cooling (DDC).

Some of the buildings are owned or managed directly or indirectly by listed entities Frasers Property and CapitaLand Investment. They are Century Square, CPF Tampines Building, Income At Tampines Junction, OCBC Tampines Centre 2, Our Tampines Hub, Tampines Mall and Tampines One.

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SP Group says the network can provide the same cooling comfort while saving energy and lowering carbon emissions. The DDC network will be operational in the first half of 2025. Instead of constructing a new centralised cooling plant, a DDC utilises existing in-building chiller plants.

By connecting injection nodes through a piping network, other buildings receive chilled water for cooling needs, replacing the need for their own chiller plants. Century Square, Our Tampines Hub and Tampines One will serve as injection nodes for this project.

The first batch of building owners to join the network are CapitaLand, CPF Board, Frasers Property, NTUC Income, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp and People’s Association.

According to SP Group, this cooling network will help the town centre reduce its carbon emissions by 1,359 tonnes annually, equivalent to removing 1,236 cars off our roads. Building owners also enjoy life-cycle economic benefits of up to $50.8 million over 30 years.

This project by SP Group is supported by Temasek, Tampines Group Representation Constituency (GRC) and the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment (MSE).

In addition, SP Group has signed a letter of intent with Ascendas REIT to design, build, own and operate the chiller plant at Telepark, an office and data centre building in Tampines. This will prepare Telepark to be a potential injection node for the network to serve future demands.

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Singaporean start-up enabler StartupX has signed a memorandum of understanding with corporate partners Sembcorp Industries subsidiary SembWaste, Circulate Capital and The Incubation Network for Asia’s inaugural waste-tech accelerator programme, named HyperScale.

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In partnership with National Environment Agency (NEA) and Enterprise Singapore, all parties pledged their commitment to supporting sustainable innovation in the areas of plastic, electronic and mixed waste.

HyperScale will take place from August to November 2022. Over 12 weeks, start-ups will undergo weekly masterclasses, workshops, mentorship and industry engagements, culminating in a Demo Day. The open call for applicants has begun.

PUB has launched a request-for-proposal (RFP) to seek innovative uses of emerging sensor technologies to collect and analyse data for coastal protection.

PUB assumed the role of the nation’s coastal protection agency in April 2020. Funding for this RFP will come from the $51 million allocated to PUB by the National Research Foundation in September 2021, under the Competitive Funding for Water Research programme. It is part of the $25 billion Research Innovation and Enterprise 2025 Plan launched in 2020.

In addition, PUB has appointed Surbana Jurong Group to undertake a site-specific study of Singapore’s northwest coast to protect against the rise in sea levels.

The 24km coastline understudy stretches from Tuas Checkpoint to Lim Chu Kang jetty and comprises mainly the Tengah, Poyan, Murai and Sarimbun reservoirs, as well as military camps and training areas. Mangrove habitats are also present along some sections of the coastline.

This study follows the City-East Coast study from May 2021. It will develop the measures needed to protect the four coastal reservoirs from seawater and ensure their structural integrity.

Fifth desalination plant, Tampines district cooling announced

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