Diversity in leadership

REMI ERIKSEN

Hello and welcome to Trust and Transformation - Leaders Navigating Change, a DNV podcast. I'm Remi Eriksen, group president and CEO of DNV. For this episode I'm in Singapore and I've invited Cindy Lim, CEO of Keppel Infrastructure. Keppel infrastructure is the infrastructure arm of Keppel Corporation and provides solutions for some of the world's most pressing challenges through its power and renewables environment and new energy businesses.

Cindy Lim has more than 20 years of experience at Keppel, and I'm delighted to welcome her to this podcast. A warm welcome Cindy.

CINDY LIM

Hi. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

REMI ERIKSEN

I’ve been asking CEOs around the world how they start their days. What do you do in the morning that promotes both your personal wellbeing and gets you ready for a busy day at work?

CINDY LIM

It's a very interesting question. In fact, I think how I get my day up depends on how prepared I am the night before. So usually at night I will do a reflection and recap of the goings for the day. And also, think forward. What would the next day's activity be? So I go to bed usually very, well prepared, sleep peacefully.

First in the morning, I wake up. I need to down myself with a big cup of lemon water. And then, of course, nothing beats two shots of espresso. Catch up on the news, the happenings of the night before. And also clear up emails and ready to go.

REMI ERIKSEN

Singapore has the highest number of female CEOs in the world. What benefits does this diversity in leadership bring to Singapore?

CINDY LIM

Well, the principles behind Singapore has always been, meritocracy, performance-based. So, I think the percentage of female senior executives is that outcome is by no means a target. And, in a way, we ought to celebrate this not just from the female perspective, but also from the male perspective, because I think diversity at large, not just gender diversity, but diversity at large, brings a lot of ideas, creation and more importantly, resilience in the society.

This also set very good, role modelling for future generations, whereby the emphasis and the focus is on contribution performance. And everyone bring their gifts to the table.

REMI ERIKSEN

Yeah. I also want to ask a question about you as a leader. Do you have a particular philosophy that characterizes you as a leader?

CINDY LIM

Firstly, my beloved parents who impart enduring values like honesty, hard work, resilience. To my stakeholders, industry partners who give me very open and collaborative environment for us to create innovation and transformative changes. More importantly, also team members around me who help translate bold visions into reality. So I guess, what characterise me would really be how I really try to enjoy working with people and setting new benchmark such that every day is better than the day before.

REMI ERIKSEN

Keppel infrastructure has many interesting projects related to the energy transition, and I want to explore your strategy in the decarbonization landscape. Singapore has a committed to reach net zero by 2050, and one of the points of difference to other countries, I understand, is that Singapore has a strong hydrogen plan to decarbonize its primary production. Why is hydrogen the right solution for Singapore, and how is that impacting what you do at Keppel infrastructure?

CINDY LIM

Hydrogen is certainly one of the potential and very promising solutions. It is not the only solution. So if we zoom out and look at what Singapore has and what Singapore has not, Singapore doesn't have, the benefit of vast land. Singapore doesn't have the benefit of natural renewable resources. So you can see we are a very renewable disadvantaged country. No strong wind, no strong title. Not enough land for solar. So yet as an economy and as a society, we depend a lot on a very resilient energy system. 95% of our energy market is powered by natural gas. Well, natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel, available for power generation. It’s very flexible, it’s very, I should say cost competitive in that sense.

So along this line, we see hydrogen as a potential way to decarbonize our power sector because of the fact that, there are already available technology for us to co combust hydrogen with natural gas as a path to net zero, for example. Of course, beyond hydrogen, alternatives like carbon capture and other hydrogen derivatives in the form of low carbon ammonia and the like would be explored.

So to this end, Keppel has also been, leaning in and playing our part to help Singapore realize its hydrogen vision. So one of it being our, first of its sky advance efficiency, hydrogen compatible combi cycle gas turbine, we are the first to market in Singapore to announce the investment and the planting of a hydrogen ready combined cycle gas to buy.

It is, even as you speak, about 80% completion in terms of construction progress. I think we are on track to achieve its commercial operation in early 2026. We are all very excited about this because this will set the ball rolling for hydrogen offtake in years to come.

REMI ERIKSEN

Important first step indeed.

CINDY LIM

Thank you.

REMI ERIKSEN

Keppel, which is the parent company of Keppel Infrastructure, recently signed a deal with Woodside Energy to supply liquid hydrogen to power campus data centers in Singapore. Can you share some thoughts on the principles you would use to get the hydrogen from Perth, Australia to here in Singapore?

CINDY LIM

Within Keppel ecosystem, other than the infrastructure business which I run, we have the connectivity business, focus on the data center as well as, network, transmission cable. We also have the real estate division, which focus on the built environment. Back to data center. We know the world is hungry for more data center, especially at the advance of generative AI. This will be a very large consumer of electricity. And of course, the top priority will be low carbon intensity electricity. So to the earlier point about finding pathway to lead us to low carbon intensity power, hydrogen is one of the pathway as to how to bring hydrogen to the data center. There are many means, whether in the form of, carriers like ammonia or liquefying hydrogen, to bring it to the demand center. These are still at early stage. We are guided by very fundamental principles such as commercial viability, technical viability, and how scalable and replicable is such a pathway and business model. So to this MoU, I think is one of the many MoUs that we see with likeminded partners who share the same ambition and the same parties to find commercially viable, technologically sound, projects and innovation.

REMI ERIKSEN

You at Keppel Infrastructure are cooperating with many stakeholders, and is looking to import renewable energy from neighboring countries? Can you share some thoughts on how that process is progressing from both a technology point of view and a policy point of view?

CINDY LIM

Sure. The Southeast Asia is a very unique association of countries. Each country is very differently endowed from the primary energy resource angle. So, for example, we have Laos, which is very rich in hydropower. We have potentially Indonesia and Philippines around the Ring of Fire so they are very rich in geothermal power, for example. And we have countries with very large land tracts like Malaysia and Indonesia, which can then leverage on such land tracts to deploy solar power. So what it means is, as a Southeast Asia or ASEAN member bloc, if we collaborate, we can harness the various sources of renewable and accelerate the deployment of renewable, reduce costs if you collaborate with one another so that there's minimized redundancy.

So to this end, ASEAN power grid or cross-border power interconnect and power trading would be one of the very important game changers. We see Singapore as playing a very instrumental role in unlocking this. Two years ago, Keppel started flowing hydropower from Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore Power Interconnection project. Happy to report that from this we derive a lot of lessons learned, whether from the technical perspective, legislative perspective, regulatory perspective and last but not least, the operative perspective.

So this lesson learned allow us to now scale up to look at cross-border power interconnect from Indonesia, from Cambodia, and you have heard the regulator has also approved importation from Vietnam and most recently from Australia. So from the regulatory perspective, we are very blessed with very open minded and supportive regulators who listen to not just the industry demand but also get themselves guided by what is technically feasible and more importantly, from the economics angle, whether it is viable for the community at large and the business at large.

So I would say that the ASEAN Power Interconnect is here to stay and hopefully we hear more good news in the quarters ahead.

REMI ERIKSEN

Very good and I think it's a very good way to decarbonize the region at the lowest possible cost and at DNV we have done some studies and the cost savings could be significant if you have this interconnectivity between the South Asian countries.

CINDY LIM

Yeah, absolutely and there's one more point which is really the resiliency - the more interconnected you are as the power grid, we believe you will lead to better resilience in the power system, let alone the flow of investment and the amount of jobs that can be created cross-border.

REMI ERIKSEN

Keppel has said it wants to build seven gigawatts of renewable energy assets by 2030 as part of its own decarbonization plan. Why take the difficult decision to build assets rather than buying some sort of carbon offset certificates?

CINDY LIM

Well, firstly principles first. I think to decarbonize the world we need to take carbon out from the system. However, we also know their economy and society that continue to demand increased power to power the improvement in the quality of life, to power livelihood and also to power the economy. So from Kepper's perspective, we feel there is no energy transition without energy addition.

So we need to add and each time we add to cater to increasing demand, the top priority ought to be to add carbon neutral or low carbon intensity power. So to this end, renewable is a very viable option and a very well sought after option. So although we went to market to announce seven gigawatt as a target, we do not chase gigawatt for gigawatt sake. So the quality of the renewable that we produce or procure become very important.

And how is this renewable used, whether it is value adding or value destroying, we do see renewables generating asset being built out but not connected to the grid. So these renewables that are built up but not connected, it doesn't help the system. We also see planting and grid connection renewable that leads to that curve, curtailment or leads to price volatility. So to this end, we think megawatt or gigawatt, not high-quality megawatt gigawatt because it leads to more volatility and disruption rather than progress and improving the quality of the grid.

REMI ERIKSEN

Very good point. Singapore is of course a major maritime hub and are exploring green shipping corridors to various ports around the world. I know Keppel infrastructure is exploring solutions for shipping and other hard-to-abate sectors. How do you get the timing right for this so you put in place the infrastructure for alternative fuels at a time when the demand exists?

CINDY LIM

This is the billion-dollar question. You will never be exactly right on a timing but what we aim to achieve is not to be complacent and not to have too high inertia. The key is to move and when I say move, it means we should be involved. We should lean in, get our hands dirty in, no pun intended, get our hands dirty in developing the solution, triangulating the trade off between financial viability versus complexity of the issue.

I mean, we talk about energy trilemma a lot, whether it is from the sustainability perspective, from the cost perspective, and from the security perspective. From our perspective, we think it is a function of optimization.

Go to where the carbon intensity sits and that is a source. So within maritime transportation and aviation transportation, we will be the next to pose power decarbonization. So for maritime decarbonization, we are participating with some very extreme partners in developing the ammonia supply chain for the purpose of building low carbon intensive ammonia for replacement of for bunker fuel, as well as potentially for direct power generation using ammonia.

REMI ERIKSEN

It is very clear the Singapore and Keppel infrastructure is taking some very innovative steps in terms of the energy transition. But what about digitalization and in particular AI or artificial intelligence. What is Keppel Infrastructure's approach in this area?

CINDY LIM

So, we see AI as an enabler; it’s a means to an end. Of course, this means is very energy intensive. Generative AI will be a big guzzler of power. Once we get across the hump, I think as a tool AI can help facilitate better decision making when it comes to solving for energy trilemma. For example, where is the best location to plan renewable? What is the best configuration to hybridize and harness renewable generation from different sources such that we can reach the lowest price cost of electricity, including down to the demand side management.

I am a strong believer that AI, generative AI, machine learning can help make our grid smarter, make our consumers more enlightened and more accountable in the way they use energy. So I think all in all, from Keppel infrastructure perspective, we will be harnessing AI to make our business more efficient, to make us more customer centric when we bring proposition to the table.

Case in point will be our operation nerve center at Changi Business Park. We are developing a machine learning optimizer - we call it Cooling in a Box - to help deliver smart and efficient cooling to our customer and in so doing, shape customers behavior in terms of the use of power and more importantly, at the grand scale, contribute to decarbonizing the energy system.

REMI ERIKSEN

To finish each podcast episode, I'd like to ask all guests to give advice to younger people at the beginning of their career. For anyone who wants to follow in your footsteps, what advice would you give them?

CINDY LIM

Well, everybody wears their unique pair of shoes and can can leave behind their unique footsteps. Be very passionate in what you do, be involved and be very hopeful and optimistic. So go to work. I mean, this is my 23rd year in Keppel. This is my sixth major portfolio in Keppel. Every morning I still wake up and go to work with a bounce in my footstep and that sparkle in my eyes, and more importantly, the fire in the belly. So I think everyone can have this treat.

REMI ERIKSEN

Thank you so much.

CINDY LIM

Thank you.

REMI ERIKSEN 

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