Singapore’s climate change puzzle: with no wind and grey skies how can Lion City kick its fossil fuel habit?
- The Lion City has an ambitious target for cutting greenhouse gases
- But it also has a large fossil fuel industry and limited renewable options, so policymakers will have to get creative
Could Singapore run without fossil fuels? Possibly. The government is thinking about it because of global trends, although getting to that future quickly will disrupt the current economic structure and affect jobs.
Minister of Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing said on Monday that the country was certainly thinking of a post fossil fuel future, but outlined Singapore’s limitations to “solving the energy puzzle”.
Singapore’s focus in the last 50 years was on securing its water needs – “we learned the important lesson never to be held ransom by a sole source,” said Chan – and energy will be the focus for the next 50 years.
Chan said there were three ways the country could manage its energy needs.
First, to diversify energy sources and Singapore has done that by moving from oil and gas to liquefied natural gas “which is one of the cleanest fossil fuels”.