Singapore has a new institute that will focus on research into fast-growing and increasingly important areas such as solar power, electric vehicles and smart power grids.
Dubbed ERI@N, short for the Energy Research Institute @ Nanyang Technological University (NTU), it will be powered by $200 million in funds from several agencies, including the Economic Development Board (EDB), the National Research Foundation (NRF) and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star).
Other areas it will conduct research into include energy materials, wind energy and sustainable buildings.
ERI@N will not go it alone. It will partner six renowned universities - the Austrian Institute of Technology, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, Imperial College London, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, University of Cambridge, and the Technical University of Munich.
It will also have a seven-member international advisory board comprising top academics in various fields. The board will be headed by a Swiss scientist, Professor Michael Gratzel, who won this year’s Millennium Technology Prize in Finland for his invention and development of dye-sensitised solar cells, a cheap and good alternative to silicon solar cells.
At the launch of the institute yesterday, Mr S. Iswaran, the Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry and Education, said the research and development (R&D) work done by ERI@N will yield insights and ideas which would affect energy policy in Singapore for the next two to three decades.
Singapore’s significant investment in energy R&D demonstrates a long-term commitment towards overcoming future energy challenges, he said. It will also transform Singapore into a smart energy economy - one that is resilient, sustainable and innovative in the use of energy.
‘Apart from creating higher value activities and quality jobs, such research helps enhance our energy security and strengthen our environmental sustainability,’ Mr Iswaran, who was guest of honour at the event at NTU’s Nanyang Executive Centre auditorium, said.
He added that in a compact, densely-populated city like Singapore, ‘these are essential public policy priorities’.
ERI@N’s research will help Singapore achieve global leadership in the area of clean energy, said the EDB yesterday.
NTU Provost Professor Bertil Andersson said that the institute’s key focus will be on alternative sources of energy, its usage and applications, and improving efficiency of current energy systems.
‘Resources, especially energy, are being consumed at unsustainable rates and the impact that this creates on environmental degradation threatens our very existence,’ he said.
Energy research was a key pillar in the landmark report of the Economic Strategies Committee earlier this year.
The panel recommended that research and development into the field be made a national priority, and this was accepted by the Government, which announced in April last year that it would commit $680 million over five years to build a clean technology ecosystem as part of its plan to turn Singapore into a global R&D hub.
The cleantech cluster was also identified as one of the key growth areas by the EDB for Singapore’s economy. It is expected to contribute $3.4 billion to Singapore’s gross domestic product and create up to 18,000 jobs by 2015.
Prof Gratzel, an expert in solar technology, said ERI@N is not just about academic research, but will develop practical applications to solve energy problems for both Singapore and the world.
One area it could look at is closing the growing energy gap. Having an energy gap means the supply of fossil and renewable energy will not be able to match the world’s demands for more electric power.
‘It’s time to tackle it on a major scale …I’m very excited about it,’ he said.
