Case study of
#00062 Centralized district cooling to replace per-building air conditioning
Marina Bay, Singapore
#00061
SuccessCity
Implementer
SP Group (Singapore District Cooling)
Timeline
Since Jan 1, 2006
Location
Marina Bay, Singapore1.2777, 103.8537
Description
Marina Bay is served by what operators describe as the world's largest underground district cooling system, operational since 2006 and built into a master-planned new downtown. Central chilled-water plants supply connected buildings via underground pipes instead of each tower running its own chillers. Singapore has since extended district-cooling infrastructure to at least eight neighbourhoods, with further build-out by operators such as Keppel.
Metrics
2Singapore neighbourhoods with district-cooling pipes8+districts
Operating since2006year
Funding
SP Group (commercial operation)
Lessons learned
- District cooling was viable here because Marina Bay was master-planned from scratch — retrofitting pipes under an existing dense district is far harder, so the infrastructure must be designed in from the start.
- The system works best for dense clusters of large, steady cooling loads (a CBD); it is not suited to low-density areas.
Documented Jun 9, 2026