The People’s Action Party’s youth wing, Young PAP (YP) has laid out key recommendations from the industry on how Singapore could enhance its efforts to secure a sustainable future. These recommendations strengthen its position paper on sustainability issues.
After developing the position paper titled “Singapore- A Green Hub” in March this year, YP conducted two focus group discussions in September 2020 with representatives from 14 relevant business sectors to seek feedback on its proposals to improve Singapore’s sustainability landscape.
The revised paper highlights three key recommendations from the industry:
- Establish Singapore as a Research and Development (R&D) hub for alternative energy;
- Professionalise the sustainability industry; and
- Develop an energy usage data sharing framework.
To establish Singapore as a R&D hub for alternative energy, YP called for the Government to direct more national resources towards scientific research for alternative energy. This can be achieved by increasing the talent pool for scientific research and investing in clean energy infrastructure. A few proposals in this section include institutionalising more corporate, university, and government partnerships and deploying supercomputers to support alternative energy research.
On professionalising the sustainability industry, YP envisioned Singapore to lead the global carbon documentation and reporting market, and provide end-to-end carbon accounting services to the world. YP proposed that Singapore can establish a state-supported set of protocols and accounting standards to document and report the end-to-end carbon emission for all products. This move can potentially create job opportunities for Singaporean PMETs, or professionals, managers, executives and technicians.
On developing an energy usage data-sharing framework, the framework can be divided into the sectoral data of each Key Industrial Sectors (KIS) and the overall Key Environmental Indicators (KEI). Data sharing can result in a reduction in compliance costs for businesses and market efficiency due to the provision of comprehensive information.
In the revised paper, YP also proposed for the Government to conduct a feasibility study of the cap-and-trade model as an alternative to the carbon tax model. The former promotes greater certainty around emissions reduction and helps governments to achieve predetermined emissions targets and to apply a falling emissions cap over time.
The paper also includes recommendations from previous consultations with sustainability advocates and the public, in the areas of driving behavioural change, multi-stakeholder cooperation on climate resilience and sustainable urban development.
Separately, on 22 November 2020, YP conducted a public consultation webinar to gather views on the various proposals raised in the updated position paper. Member of Parliament for Nee Soon GRC and GPC Chairman for Sustainability and the Environment, Mr Louis Ng, was the guest speaker.
Read YP’s paper here.
