Singapore is stepping up efforts to enter the emerging nuclear fusion energy industry through a partnership between local research agency A*STAR and Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), the world’s largest commercial fusion energy company.
The five-year agreement, signed during Ecosperity conference in Singapore on Wednesday, will focus on developing technologies for commercial fusion power plants and position Singapore as an early participant in the global fusion energy supply chain.
The partnership expands earlier collaboration between A*STAR, CFS and ST Engineering on components for Commonwealth Fusion Systems and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (SPARC), a fusion demonstration device under construction in Massachusetts that is scheduled to generate more energy from fusion than it consumes by 2027.
CFS plans to apply lessons from the roughly US$1 billion SPARC project to Arc, its first commercial-scale fusion power plant planned in Virginia in the early 2030s. Google, one of CFS’s investors, has signed an agreement to buy half of the plant’s electricity output.
The push for fusion comes as soaring electricity demand from artificial intelligence (AI) and data centres forces governments and technology firms to search for stable low-carbon power sources. The International Energy Agency projects global data centre electricity consumption will more than double to around 945 terawatt-hours by 2030.
Fusion energy is produced when light atoms are forced together to release energy, replicating the process that powers the sun. Advocates say fusion could provide large amounts of carbon-free electricity without the risk of runaway chain reactions associated with conventional nuclear fission reactors. But scientists and engineers still face major technical and commercialisation hurdles, including sustaining ultra-hot plasma and securing materials capable of withstanding fusion conditions.
“For Singapore, achieving net zero by 2050 is a national priority,” A*STAR chief executive Beh Kian Teik said during the signing ceremony.
“As a small dense urban nation, I think we cannot rely on just one path, we need choices and we need resilience, and that is why we are investing in new pathways to give the country the energy options that it will need for our next generation,” he said.
Beh said while fusion had seen “significant breakthroughs in recent years”, “there are not yet demonstration plants that are generating electricity”, adding that the industry still faced “massive engineering challenges”.
“The science seems clear, but the engineering is a non-trivial task,” he said.
CFS chief executive and co-founder Bob Mumgaard said the partnership aimed to help build the first commercially-viable fusion power system that generates more energy than is required to produce it with SPARC in Massachusetts.
“If we could make that happen in a machine … that could really unlock not just the things we need for prosperity for people who don’t have power, but also the things we need to power an industrial high-tech society,” Mumgaard said.
He said Singapore had played a role in translating fusion research into industrial capabilities and hardware already being used in SPARC.
“We can actually literally point to hardware that is delivered of actual fusion components in the world’s leading fusion device in Massachusetts,” he said.
The collaboration comes amid growing global interest in nuclear energy as countries seek low-carbon power sources to support electrification, AI infrastructure and climate goals.
Major technology firms including Google, Amazon and Meta have recently backed initiatives supporting the expansion of nuclear energy capacity to meet rising power demand from AI and data centres.
A separate initiative launched in Singapore this week, the Global Coalition for Nuclear Philanthropy, aims to mobilise philanthropic funding to support the safe and equitable deployment of nuclear energy worldwide over the next decade.
Backed by Temasek Trust and the Rockefeller Foundation, the coalition has gained support from organisations including Founders Pledge and The Oppenheimer Project.
The initiative aligns with a pledge made by more than 30 countries at the COP28 climate summit to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050 to help meet net zero targets.
