Debated in Parliament on 13 Sep 2021.
Ms Poh Li San asked the Minister for Trade and Industry in view of the “code red for humanity” warning in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report and industries contributing to about 60% of Singapore’s greenhouse gas emissions (a) whether the Ministry will accelerate the decarbonisation of our power grids by using more imported renewable energy; and (b) whether the Ministry will impose more stringent carbon emission quotas and energy consumption targets on sectors with higher carbon footprints, such as petrochemicals, semi-conductor and data centres.
Singapore is committed to play our part to address global climate change. We have pledged to peak our emission at no more than 65 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent (MtCO2e) around 2030, halve that to 33 MtCO2e by 2050 and eventually achieve net zero emission. Earlier this year, we launched the Singapore Green Plan 2030 to strengthen our climate commitments and advance our national agenda on sustainable development.
Singapore has limited capacity to generate renewable energy. We will quintuple our solar panels deployment by 2030 to generate at least two gigawatt-peak of electricity, but this will only constitute around 3% of our projected total energy consumption in 2030.
Thus, we will need to supplement this with imported renewable energy, while we develop other low-carbon energy sources like hydrogen. The Energy Market Authority (EMA) is conducting trials of electricity imports which will pave the way for more electricity imports over the longterm. MTI will be outlining our plans for electricity imports in the near future.
On the demand side, we will also need to encourage our companies to be more carbon efficient. We have introduced the carbon tax to provide the price signal to encourage companies to reduce emissions and at the same time, give them the flexibility to act where it makes the most economic sense. The Government is reviewing the trajectory and level of the carbon tax, post-2023, and will announce the outcome of the review in 2022, to give businesses time to adjust to any revision in the carbon tax trajectory.
In addition, we have used incentives such as the Resource Efficiency Grant for Energy (REG(E)) and the Energy Efficiency Fund (E2F) to help companies improve energy efficiency and adopt cleaner technologies.
The Government will continue to work closely with our industries to ensure that while we continue to grow our economy to provide good jobs for Singaporeans, we do so in a manner that supports global efforts to address climate change.
PAPERCUTS