Singapore's Energy Market Authority gave Sembcorp Utilities conditional approval on Oct. 26 to import 1.3 gigawatts of low-carbon electricity from Vietnam and Malaysia, as the government set out plans for five new gas-fired power plants to meet demand it expects to climb as high as 13 GW by 2031.

The two decisions, unveiled at the start of Singapore International Energy Week, show how the city-state intends to power an economy that is courting chipmakers and data center operators while relying on imported natural gas for 95% of its electricity, according to Argus Media. For investors in regional utilities, grid builders and renewable developers, the plan points to years of contracted work on both sides of the Johor Strait and beyond.

Sembcorp's regional import project

Sembcorp Utilities is developing the project with the MY Energy Consortium, which includes Malaysia's Petronas and Tenaga Nasional Berhad, and with Petrovietnam Technical Services Corp., the regulator said in its release. Power would come from offshore wind farms in Vietnam and solar plants in Malaysia.

The partners signed a joint development agreement in May 2025 on the sidelines of the 46th ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur. Sembcorp aims to begin delivering electricity by 2035.

A conditional approval is an early step. Over the next few years the consortium still has to win approvals in the other jurisdictions involved, sign power purchase agreements with buyers in Singapore and line up financing, the authority said. It did not give a cost estimate for the project.

The authority has already handed conditional approvals or conditional licences to import projects in Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam. Singapore's official goal, raised in September 2024 from 4 GW, is to import 6 GW of low-carbon power by 2035, or about a third of its needs at that point, according to a summary of the regulator's announcement published by the French Chamber of Commerce in Singapore.

Five gas plants and a demand forecast

The authority released the five-year infrastructure plan for 2026 to 2031 on the conference's opening day; the event ran from Oct. 26 to Oct. 30. Five gas-fired plants are scheduled to start operating over that period and would raise generating capacity by about 26% from the current 12 GW, Argus reported.

The regulator projects peak demand of 9.9 GW to 13 GW by 2031, compared with 8.6 GW in August 2026. Most of the growth is expected to come from semiconductor manufacturing, data centers and electric transport, according to Argus.

The authority is also assessing bids from a request for proposals that closed in September for gas plants to be running by 2032, and said more tenders could follow during the five-year period. Officials are studying a new energy cluster on Pulau Tekong, which could host hydrogen-ready gas plants, a liquefied natural gas terminal and other low-carbon technology.

Gas import capacity is set to grow as well. Regasification capacity will rise to 15 million metric tons a year from 10 million when a second LNG terminal at Jurong Port opens by 2030, Argus said.

Storage, solar and a second Malaysia link

Energy storage is planned to rise to just over 1 gigawatt-hour by 2030 from about 350 megawatt-hours, a near tripling. Feasibility studies are under way for a second interconnector with Peninsular Malaysia that could carry up to 2 GW by 2030, according to Argus.

Singapore has about 2.3 gigawatts-peak of solar installed and is on track for 3 GWp by 2030, with room for 4 GWp by 2035. Tan See Leng, the minister in charge of energy, said solar "remains Singapore's most viable indigenous renewable energy source," Argus reported.

At the same conference, officials renewed an energy agreement with Malaysia and announced projects in geothermal power, storage and grid infrastructure, Reccessary reported. Puah Kok Keong, chief executive of the Energy Market Authority, called for closer regional grid links and regulatory cooperation, according to the same report.

For companies, the near-term signal is in the gas build-out: new plants and the Jurong Port terminal fall inside the next five years, while most cross-border import projects, including Sembcorp's, are not due to deliver power until the mid-2030s. The next marker for investors is the regulator's decision on the gas-plant proposals from the September tender, which are meant to be running by 2032.