Though it is one of the world’s smallest countries (Singapore is less than half the size of London), the thriving financial hub is one of the biggest per capita carbon dioxide emitters in Asia, according to a report by AFP.

One of the newly built solar farms stretches off the coast of Singapore into the Johor Strait, which separates Singapore from Malaysia.

13,000 panels are anchored to the seabed of the Johor Strait with the capacity to produce five megawatts of electricity, enough to power almost 1,500 flats for an entire year. The panels are built in China, the world’s largest solar panel manufacturer, and fastened to the seabed using chains and concrete blocks.

This photograph taken on January 22, 2021 shows a worker pulling a cable along a floating solar power farm at sea, off Singapore’s northern coast just across the Malaysian state of Johor. – Thousands of panels glinting in the sun stretch into the sea off Singapore, part of the land-scarce city-state’s push to build floating solar farms to cut greenhouse gas emissions. (Photo by Roslan RAHMAN / AFP) / To go with ‘SINGAPORE-SOLAR-ENERGY-CLIMATE,FOCUS’ by Martin ABBUGAO

Despite its standing as a financial hub, Singapore faces an unenviable task in its implementation of renewable energies. The small country has no rivers fast enough for hydro-electricity and the wind in the region is not strong enough year-round to power turbines.

Instead, the country’s government turned to solar power. Still, with its lack of land resources for solar farms, is resorting to installing the panels out at sea and on its reservoirs — an initiative that has the potential to hinder the country’s shipping industry.

Last month, Singapore unveiled a wide-ranging “green plan” that included measures to quadruple solar energy use to approximately two percent of the nation’s power needs by 2025, and to three percent by 2030 — enough to power 350,000 households per year.

According to Interesting Engineering

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