The Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment (MSE) has published the inaugural GreenGov.SG report on Friday (Dec 15), listing a bunch of measures that’ll allow Singapore to keep up with its Green Plan 2030.
Among the several measures listed in the report, are ‘phasing out the use of bottled water for meetings organised within public sector premises’ and ‘reducing the number of lifts in operation during non-peak hours’.
Banking on solar energy for the future
The report has stated several ideas while will be implemented by the country and achieved by as late as 2045.
“We aim to have 100% of our cars run on cleaner energy by 2035. We will switch from internal combustion engine to clean energy vehicles with zero tailpipe emissions for all new cars that are procured and registered, starting from FY2023,” the report said.
In addition to this, The Land Transport Authority will have 100% cleaner energy bus fleet by 2040. Half of the fleet will run on cleaner energy by 2030. As per the report, Singapore had 60 buses, by FY 2022, that fulfilled the criteria.
The report also mentioned solar energy as Singapore’s most viable source of renewable energy and said that the ‘national target is to deploy at least 2 GWp by 2030’. “The public sector will support the national target, by deploying at least 1.5 GWp of solar energy by 2030. As of FY2022, we have deployed in total more than 300 MWp of solar energy, around 50% more than FY2020,” the report read.
To this end, the government has developed the SolarNova programme, to track its demand for solar panels to achieve cost efficiencies. In sync with its vision, as of FY2022, approximately 3,300 HDB (Housing and Development Board) blocks and 161 public sector buildings have been installed with solar panels. “Energy generated from the solar panels on HDB blocks is used to power common services such as lifts, lights and water pumps during the day, with excess energy channelled to the grid,” the report said.
Surge in electricity, water usage
It also mentioned that FY2022 recorded a 1.7% increase in the use of electricity by the public sector. While FY2021 reported 5,472,158,088 kWh, FY2022 registered the usage of 5,590,700,505 kWh. The increase, according to the government, “was mainly due to a gradual normalisation of economic and social activities, opening of new healthcare facilities and MRT stations, and an increase in electric bus deployment”.
The PMO registered the biggest jump with 28.5% from the baseline number of 42,569,511 kWh. The MOF reported recorded -19% consumption from its baseline number of 51,271,416 kWh.
Similarly, the use of water also witnessed a surge in FY2022. The public sector used 32,875,004,695 litres of water. It was a 1.2% jump from the baseline number of 32,469,671,342 litres.
Meanwhile, a significant omission from the report was performance data for waste. It said that more time is needed to “improve the Singapore public sector’s data collection processes for waste, as waste disposal is not metered, unlike electricity and water use”. The other factor that led to the exclusion is waste getting mixed-up at bin centres.
Speaking about the report, Teo Chee Hean, Senior Minister and Chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Climate Change, said, “The public sector will set an example for the rest of Singapore to follow. We aim to achieve net zero emissions around 2045, five years ahead of our national target of 2050.”