Europe had once planned to create Solar Plants all over North Africa. Manned by African immigrants that might end up in Europe. But then European corruption and rampant African corruption happened. So all those plans and attempts fell through without even getting off the ground-level.
Singapore and Australia are the pinnacle of economic and political systems in the Oceania region. China does not even matter beyond the stick-waving and other propaganda stupidity.
Singapore has ties globally and sits at the strategic Singapore Straits.
Australia is one of the strongest “Western” markets with close ties to the UK and US. New Zealand are very much dependent and isolated from the rest of the world and hence have almost negligible influence politically or economically.
Malaysia , Indonesia and the Philippines are very corrupt and similar in their status quo of most countries surrounding the South China Sea. They are all dependent on foreign trade, foreign customers and have very little in terms of large industrial/dense-commercial domestic markets.
Setting up the stage, Australia while does have good industrial,dense-commercial, educational/research, and other leading advanced technologies , there is still that “lobbying” and other western/capitalist/modern corruption driving political decisions.
Coal/Oil/Gas Corpos, Gambling Corpos, CIA-controlled, Organized-Criminals running things in-front and behind the scenes.
You will not get very far with renewables in Aussie Land. Just watch FriendlyJordies and AustralienGov youtube videos if you want to go-down-under the rabbithole.
I don’t get it, they are surrounded by water. Why not build wind turbines and also include the surrounding countries instead of going 4500km away? Wouldn’t 10B in the immediate surroundings be a more secure investment?
Also, why wouldn’t Australia build this kind of a network for themselves? They could be 100% green pretty easily.
Singapore is on the equator, within the intertropical convergence zone which is known for windless weather. Wind farms wouldn’t be as efficient there.
And what fill up important shipping and harbours with WindFarms ? They have almost no land and actively are dredging and building up out on the sea as it is.
If they expand too much they will either lose shipping lanes or docking locations for container ships.
You can’t mess with the local wildlife and ecology. There is a limit to anything and everything that Singapore can do on their already over-built tiny island.
Yes, that’s why they could try and get wind farms along the coast of the myriads island around them. They are already proving that they are OK with getting energy from long distances, why not from the Philippines, Borneo, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, etc. They are much closer.
Do you understand how corruption works in SouthEast Asia? Do you understand the threat of China simply “stealing” / “destroying” other countries infrastructure? Imagine if China could cripple Singapore by cutting undersea cables etc, what would happen to WindFarms that are on the ocean surface.
Singapore PHYSICALLY CANNOT run WindFarms of the size and scale you are talking about. Not on their own territories and definitively not in other surrounding countries territories. Singapore depends on Water from Malaysia already( even then Singapore is installing Desalination plants in attempts to reduce the dependencies as we speak ) And If Singapore decides to depend so much on their neighbours, there is a real and imminent threat of corruption/sabotage/malfeasance/crimes that can seriously affect Singapore.
So instead of diversifying the risk and having multiple partners they’re going to have one single long cable that can be cut? I don’t think that makes more sense.
