Global Warming Is Turning Singapore Into A ‘Green' City
The Singapore Green Plan 2030 And Its Impact On Economy

Photo from Dhoomil Sheta on Unsplash

As published on August 9, 2021, The Straits Times, “Singapore has already experienced warming higher than the global average because of the urban heat island effect - a phenomenon of urban structures trapping heat in the day and releasing it at night.

Local temperatures are 1.8 deg C higher than they were in 1948, data from the National Environment Agency’s Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS) showed. In contrast, global temperatures have warmed by about 1.1 deg C from pre-industrial times, which ended around 1850.”

A discerning fact revealed by Prof. Benjamin Horton, the director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore and Asian School Of Environment (NTU) was the accelerated melting phenomenon of the earth’s two largest ice sheets - Greenland and Antarctica. (video here @ PBS Newshour)

By having a hypothesis that if all the ice in Greenland and Antarctica are to melt, each will raise sea level by 7m and 65m respectively, it will cover more than a third of the height of the Singapore Flyer.

Generally, South East Asia will experience flash floods with rainfall becoming more intense and frequent especially if there is no proper drainage system in place.

What Is Singapore Green Plan 2030?

Singapore, a red dot amidst the gigantic landscape of the earth contributes to 0.1 % of global emissions. In order to combat global warming and eliminate the effect of climate change, the Singapore government developed the Green Plan to achieve net-zero emission.

The Singapore Green Plan 2030 is a roadmap that charts Singapore’s commitments under the UN’s (United Nation) 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and Paris Agreement as well as pose the city-state to achieve its long-term, net-zero emissions goal.

The plan is presented with 5 key pillars i.e. City in Nature, Sustainable Living, Energy Reset, Green Economy, and Resilient Future.

Roadmap To The Green Plan

Below entails the key targets for Green Plan:

• Add over 130 ha of new parks, and enhance around 170 ha of existing parks with more lush vegetation and natural landscapes by end-2026.
• 80% of new buildings to be Super Low Energy buildings from 2030, and 80% improvement in energy efficiency over 2005 baseline for best-in-class green buildings by 2030
• New registrations of diesel cars and taxis to cease from 2025
• 8 EV-Ready Towns with chargers at all HDB carparks by 2025.
• All new car and taxi registrations to be of cleaner-energy models from 2030.
• 60,000 charging points nationwide, including 40,000 in public carparks and 20,000 in private premises by 2030，
• Plant 1 million more trees.
• Increase solar deployment to 1.5 gigawatt peak (GWp) by 2025, and at least 2 GWp by 2030.
• Expand cycling network to 1,320km by 2030.
• Increase rail network to 360km by early 2030s.
• Reduce waste sent to our landfill per capita per day by 20% by 2026, with the goal of reaching 30% by 2030.
• Increase share of trips taken on mass public transport to 75% by 2030.
• At least 20% of schools to be carbon neutral by 2030.
• Promote sustainable fuels for international trade and travel.
• Phase-out refrigeration and air-conditioning equipment that use high global warming potential (GWP) refrigerants from the 4th quarter of 2022.
• Use 15% less energy in HDB towns by 2030.
• Produce 30% of our nutritional needs by 2030 locally (30-by-30 target).
• Introduce an Enterprise Sustainability Programme, to help enterprises, especially SMEs, embrace sustainability and develop capabilities in this area.
• Create new and diverse job opportunities in sectors such as green finance, sustainability consultancy, verification, credits trading, and risk management.
• Be a leading center for Green Finance in Asia and globally, by building up the financial sector’s resilience to environmental risks, developing green financial solutions, building knowledge and capabilities, and leveraging innovation and technology.
• Promote homegrown innovation under the Research and Innovation & Enterprise Plan 2025, and attract companies to anchor their R&D activities in Singapore to develop new sustainability solutions.
• Green 80% of buildings by Gross Floor Area by 2030.

Of these initiatives, let us zoom in to discuss some areas of the green plan.

Energy Reset Plan

In essence, this plan focuses on the area of Singapore housing, transport, and the implementation of green energy.

For housing, the existing HDB town will use 15% less energy through the widespread use of smart LED lights and solar energy. A centralized cooling system, electric vehicle charging points, and extensive deployment of solar panels will also be the new sight in new town carparks since the diesel cars and taxis will be phased out by 2050.

Currently, Singapore is starting to purchase green energy sources from ASEAN and beyond through electricity import. The adoption of new, advanced, combined-cycle gas turbines will replace traditional power plant operations as well.

What Does This Bring To The Economy?

All the efforts in Energy Reset above aimed to reduce carbon emissions thereby implicating a drop in fuel use.

A report by The Guardian indicated Wood Mackenzie's predictions on global oil growth which will plateau around 2035 – earlier than some previous forecasts.

Driven by the increase in demand for electric-driven vehicles, UK and France will slowly phase out the sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2040, and China, one of the World’s largest energy markets is following suit. This undoubtedly brings upon the peak at oil price in the coming 5 to 10 year’s time.

Another source of forecast comes from EIA, Energy Information Administration, “the EIA predicts that by 2025 Brent crude oil’s nominal price will rise to $66/b. By 2030, world demand is seen driving Brent prices to $89/b. By 2040, prices are projected to be $132/b. By then, the cheap oil sources will have been exhausted, making it more expensive to extract oil. By 2050, oil prices could be $185/b.

It also assumes that demand for petroleum flattens out as utilities rely more on natural gas and renewable energy. It also assumes the economy grows around 2% annually, while energy consumption decreases by 0.4% a year.” (Excerpt from https://www.thebalance.com/oil-price-forecast-3306219).

With oil prices being connected in a cause and effect relationship with inflation, i.e. an upward shift in oil price moves up inflation, it may inevitably create pressure on the global economy.

Green Economy

Another pillar from the Green Plan is the Green Economy which consists of the following:

• Introduce an Enterprise Sustainability Programme, to help enterprises, especially SMEs, embrace sustainability and develop capabilities in this area.
• Create business and job opportunities in sectors such as green finance, sustainability consultancy, verification, credits trading, and risk management.
• Be a leading center for Green Finance in Asia and globally, by building up the financial sector’s resilience to environmental risks, developing green financial solutions, building knowledge and capabilities, and leveraging innovation and technology.
• Promote homegrown innovation under the Research, Innovation and Enterprise Plan 2025, and attract companies to anchor their R&D activities in Singapore to develop new sustainability solutions.

Economy Growth With The Green Economy Program

The Enterprise Sustainability Programme aims to support the sustainability ecosystem with the Enterprise Financing Scheme - Green (EFS-Green) by partnering with financial institutions to provide financing for Project Developers, System Integrators, and Technology & Solution Enablers which develop enabling technologies and solutions to reduce waste, resource use, or greenhouse gas emissions.

This move indirectly induces the increment in the employment rate and thus created an overall positive economic outlook.

A Green Finance Industry Taskforce (GFIT) established by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) drives several initiatives to accelerate green finance in Singapore through improving disclosures and fostering green solutions. Primarily, they issued a framework to help banks assess eligible green trade finance transactions; and a whitepaper on scaling green finance in the real estate, infrastructure, fund management, and transition sectors.

(cited from https://www.mas.gov.sg/news/media-releases/2021/accelerating-green-finance)

The RIE2015 and RIE2020 plans included translation, commercialization, and innovation strategies to tap on the growing pipeline of promising research outputs and support Singapore enterprises.

Over the past 20 years, Singapore had a steady rise in the overall research quality and its publications are amongst the world’s most highly cited.

Photo from National Research Foundation Singapore

RIE investments will be integrated tightly with national initiatives, such as the work of the Future Economy Council to drive economic growth and industry transformation, and our Smart Nation efforts to build a digital future for Singapore.

Approaches To RIE 2025

• Research funding to ensure targeted support for the various segments of the research ecosystem.
• Increase funding for medium-sized grants to bring together capabilities that have sufficient scale for impact.
• Established I&E platforms that have shown good progress in driving technology translation of public sector S&T and innovation capabilities, to create value for our enterprises.
• Scale-up these I&E platforms to expand the reach and support to local enterprises in technology translation and commercialization and allow the platform to cater for high-growth adjacencies such as integrated medical devices or digital health.
• Manpower schemes will be enhanced to gather and nurture ‘bilingual’ talent who have both technical and business expertise.

(Cited from https://www.nrf.gov.sg/rie2025-plan)

Through this regime of fundings and technology building, it creates opportunities for many SMEs to collaborate to harness the existing green initiatives and steer the nation to achieve a truly Green City.