During the Responsible Business Forum held in Singapore last month, Mr Masagos Zulkifli, Minister For The Environment and Water Resources, Singapore has reaffirmed Singapore’s commitment towards sustainability and climate change.
Although Singapore only contributes 0.11% of global emissions, the city state has pledged to work with the industry to improve energy efficiency from the current level of 0.6%, to 1 to 2% annually. This is the annual energy efficiency improvement rates achieved in leading countries like Belgium and the Netherlands.
Watch his speech below.
To achieve this, Mr Zulkifli has detailed some of the actions that Singapore government has already adopted.
First, Singapore will introduce carbon tax in 2019 to encourage companies to be more “carbon-free” in their operation. All the revenue generated from this tax will go into supporting initiative to improve energy efficient
Second, Singapore government will lead by example in adopting clean energy in public sectors. For instance, the Government has implemented the SolarNova programme to accelerate solar growth locally and to aggregate solar demand across various agencies. With the limited land area, floating solar panels will be deployed on reservoirs to further increase city’s solar capacity.
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Third, Singapore will be investing in clean energy research and development. Research centres, such as the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS) and the Energy Research Institute at NTU (ERI@N), are collaborating with industry to support efforts towards large-scale deployment of solar systems.
On the global front, Singapore works closely with international partners to exchange knowledge on climate change and green growth. Under the Singapore Cooperation Programme, more than 112,000 officials from developing countries have visited Singapore to study key areas such as sustainable development, urban planning, and water management to date.
Read his full speech here
Also published on Medium.