Biofuel Breakthrough

Local renewable energy startup gets its break in the unlikeliest of times.

- JENNIFER CHEN

Before circular economy and urban rooftop farming became hot topics, Allan Lim had tied his fortunes to the concept of sustainable energy. A civil engineer, Lim explored the potential of transforming waste into fuel with like-minded university friends in 2007. Inspired by the book Power to the People and its talk about democratising renewable energy, the group began experimenting with used cooking oil in their kitchens. They ruined pots and pans and flummoxed their wives but enough hope emerged for them to quit their jobs and pursue the project in a proper lab.

“There, we used buckets and made 20 litres of biofuel,” Lim reminisces. “No one believed in us. I got my army mate to come with his truck by promising him free fuel. We loaded it into the vehicle and it worked!” Lim calls this story the “genesis” of Alpha Biofuels. He didn’t know then that 15 years would pass before the company became viable. Or that the catalyst for its success would come during one of Singapore’s most trying times.

Says Lim: “We were surprised during the Covid years. Times were tough, but there was a fundamental shift in the way big companies regarded sustainability, probably due to COP26. There was a structure they had to follow in terms of financial and corporate reporting. That created a lot of demand for us.”