Hansard, Thursday, 4 March 2021

1 Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang asked the Minister for Sustainability and the Environment whether the Government will look into deploying smaller and more discreet surveillance cameras for capturing high-rise littering so as to avoid alerting potential offenders to the deployment of these cameras.

The National Environment Agency (NEA) is continually looking to enhance its enforcement capabilities, including for high-rise littering surveillance, by keeping pace with the latest developments in camera technology. Cameras that are smaller in size tended to have a shorter optical range and duration. NEA will consider the effectiveness of surveillance equipment comprehensively in its adoption.

Mr Louis Ng.

Thank you, Madam, and I thank the Senior Minister of State for the reply. Could I just ask whether there is a timeframe in terms of reviewing the effectiveness of the current surveillance cameras? I just did my home visits again and I still have the same feedback about the same debate that we had a few years ago, about how, when we put the surveillance camera there, it is good deterrence – people stopped littering or throwing out their cigarette butts. But the minute we remove the cameras, they start again. So, it is a cat-and-mouse game and it really is a waste of our current resources.

Can NEA look into this; look into deploying smaller, more discreet cameras so that we can have more effective enforcement on the ground?

Let me explain. We are mindful of the feedback that we have gotten and indeed, we are aware of this. As I have said, we continue to look at developments in camera technology for more effective and better deployment. But in the mean time, to make it less conspicuous, we deploy the camera quite a distance away from the suspected units. We try to deploy at ground level where site conditions permit and, only in cases where this is not possible, do we look for an adjacent block to deploy the camera.

We also need to consider other factors that will help us in apprehending the high-rise litter bugs. For instance, you need to deploy the camera over a sufficient surveillance duration, which is maybe, a few days; five days or even more. Therefore, you will require a battery pack. You will also need to make sure that the cameras are tamper-proof, not subjected to mischief, for instance. And to mount it securely, you need a camera pole. Actually, it is not just the size of the camera but the entire system, which comprises the camera plus the battery pack.

There is also this trade-off between size and efficacy. You need cameras with wider optical range because you usually do not have good enough information to know exactly which floor and, in fact, even which stack. So, you need a wider optical range from which to increase the chance to apprehend the high-rise littering offenders. That is the reason why, if you look at it, it is not just the size of the camera, but the entire system.

As I have said, we will continue to look at developments in camera technology, including better image resolution and detection capabilities. At the moment, smaller cameras mean shorter surveillance duration capabilities as well as very limited optical range.

At the end of the day, enforcement does act as a deterrent, but for a long-term sustainable solution, it must be that we want to encourage all Singapore residents to take collective responsibility, to encourage and influence each other to be civic-minded and to have positive social norms.

2 Mr Leon Perera asked the Minister for Manpower for each of the past three years, where penalties were imposed for breaches of the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices (a) what is the percentage breakdown of the cases related to different bases of discrimination such as nationality, race and gender; (b) what is the number of firms which have been penalised; (c) whether any penalties have been levied that do not involve the curtailment of foreign work passes and, if so, how many of such cases; and (d) whether harsher penalties have been imposed on firms which are repeat offenders as compared to first-time offenders.

Over the past three years, the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP) handled an average of 400 discrimination cases annually, including those arising from proactive checks by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) on discriminatory hiring practices.

In about 50 cases each year, the employers were found to be in breach of the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices and had their work pass privileges suspended. About 60% of such cases involved nationality-based discrimination, and about one-third involved gender and age discrimination, split about equally between the two. The remaining cases involved other types of discrimination such as race, marital status or family responsibilities.

Apart from suspending work pass privileges, MOM also issues warnings to employers for less severe breaches, such as lapses in their HR practices which resulted in miscommunication and discrimination in the recruitment process. In these cases, TAFEP will step in and advise the employers on the required rectifications. MOM issued an average of 40 warnings annually.

MOM takes a serious view of discrimination at the workplace. Over the past three years, there has not been a repeat offender.

I thank the Minister of State for her answer. I think that was very helpful. Just a few supplementary questions. Firstly, would the Government consider publishing these statistics on an annual basis?

Secondly, does the Government regularly conduct a survey on perceptions of discrimination? I did actually ask this in the House in the last term and my understanding is that such a survey is carried out occasionally. But could there be a regular cycle to understand within the job market what are the perceptions of discrimination on the part of jobseekers?

And thirdly, could the Minister of State share if there are cases of companies from this group who have been found to engage in discriminatory practices who have not been amenable to pressure by way of having their foreigner work passes curtailed, because they do not employ foreigners, and therefore, they are not amenable to the warnings and the pressures from MOM based on the current tool-kit.

I thank the hon Member Mr Leon Perera for the supplementary questions. I will take the three questions together. On whether MOM tracks perceptions of discrimination, we do track public perception of fair employment practices through regular opinion polls, and also, more detailed surveys of employment practices over time. Notwithstanding the progress made by employers over the years, MOM did observe an increase in the percentage of local jobseekers who perceived discrimination during the job search process between 2014 and 2018. MOM will continue to conduct regular surveys so that we have a good pulse of public opinion on this matter.

On whether there were companies that were not amenable to the warnings and pressure from MOM because they did not hire foreign workers, for cases of discriminatory dismissal, as an example, the employer can also be ordered by the Employment Claims Tribunals to compensate the employees. In addition, if the firm is an employment agency, demerit points could be imposed. If sufficient demerit points are accumulated, the licence could be suspended or revoked.

We also take companies to task for false declarations of fair hiring practices. In the past, we have sought legal action against such companies.

On whether we will publish statistics regularly on companies in breach of fair hiring practices, we will consider doing so if we think it helps in clarifying public opinion of the situation on the ground as well as in shaping employers' behaviour, to correct their behaviour towards fair employment practices.

I thank the Minister of State for the reply. Could I ask if we are going to review the penalties under the tripartite guidelines? It sort of makes sense if you discriminate based on nationality, we curtail your work pass privileges. But if you discriminate based on gender, on family responsibility, then the penalties to curtail the work pass privileges sort of do not make sense. I know the Minister of State shared some of the other penalties earlier, but I am just wondering overall, we can review the penalty framework so that it is aligned with what the discrimination is about.

We just reviewed the penalty framework in 2020 and we will continue to review it further if necessary. Thus far, we have not seen any repeat of discriminatory practices from the companies that were penalised.

3 Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang asked the Minister for Transport (a) whether he can provide an update on the six-month pilot programme by SMRT Taxis to progressively equip its fleet of 2,800 taxis with booster seats for young children; and (b) whether the pilot will be extended to all taxis companies.

Madam, SMRT commenced a six-month Booster Seat Pilot Programme in March 2020, but due to the circuit breaker, it was extended to December 2020.

About 1,750 SMRT taxis were equipped with booster seats for young children. However, the utilisation rate for these booster seats was low, as there were very few requests for the booster seats from commuters. The booster seats remain in the taxis, and SMRT will provide further updates on their usage soon. If there are other taxi companies who are keen to conduct similar pilots, LTA will be glad to consider.

I thank the Senior Parliamentary Secretary for the reply. I am just concerned why we are looking at utilisation rate versus safety. We know that children are getting injured because they are not in child car seats during the accident. We know that being in a child car seat can reduce the incidents of death by over 50% if you are in a car seat. So, I urge MOH to look into this as more of a safety issue rather than how many people are going to use it.

Secondly, I know there is a previous MOT reply that it is more practical for taxis to not carry the child car seats. Again, I hope we do not look at it as practicality versus safety. The practicality concerns are addressed already because nowadays, as I have showed the Senior Parliamentary Secretary, the child car seats are really compact; so, it does not take up much space. In fact, some of the booster seats can fit under the driver's seat. So, there is no issue of practicality and again, I hope we look at this at the safety angle.

For private vehicles, if your child is not in a car seat, you could go to jail for it. But somehow, I find it strange that the same car, same model, when it becomes a taxi, the safety considerations just disappear. I hope the Senior Parliamentary Secretary can clarify why.

I thank the Member for his clarification. As always, every policy needs to strike a good balance, and in this case, for taxi drivers, the cost and also, operational considerations for them. Because taxis are used for livelihood. Taxi drivers make multiple trips throughout the day, serving the diverse needs of different passengers. In fact, we came to this position after public consultation with different stakeholders. Naturally, there was a range of views and one, as advocated by the Member Louis Ng, was that there should not be any compromise. So, all children in all vehicles must be in a booster seat or seat harness.

But taxi operators did highlight the constraints because taxis need to satisfy a boot size requirement for luggage or things carried by passengers. If we add on the booster seat requirement, it may pose a challenge, especially for the new hybrid car models which tend to have a smaller boot.

I thank the Member for showing me a compact booster seat that may be easier to store, but we must also look at – if the rule was or the law was implemented on taxis, it means that every child passenger in all taxis must be seated on a booster seat. First, it is not feasible for taxis to be fully equipped with different permutations of child restraints to cater to the children who may board the taxi. Also, this current exemption will facilitate taxis to offer street hail service for commuters with young children. Because the "flag, board and go" nature of street hails will be slowed down when the taxi drivers need to fix up the booster seats when stopping alongside the road.

This also may lead to some unhappiness among families with multiple young children, because they will need multiple taxis as there may not be sufficient child restraints in a single vehicle; or a larger capacity taxi with the various seats. So, it means that higher costs will be incurred on the families. And I do not think it is wise to impose this during this current economic situation.

But, parents have option of using private hire cars, or PHCs, already, as they are included in this Act. Because PHCs are pre-booked, the passengers can indicate upfront, the seats required and the drivers have ample notice to prepare the seats for the passengers. Therefore, PHCs are included. Today, most if not, all parents of young children should be quite savvy in using ride-hailing apps.

Therefore, I seek the Member's and parents' understanding that the current position does offer options and it strikes a good balance.

I agree with Senior Parliamentary Secretary that there is a cost concern, but I hope then it is not the third element where it is cost versus safety. I am speaking up for the private hire drivers as well. We make it compulsory for them, for PHCs that they have to be in car seats. Then again, it is a bit strange that for taxis, it is not. The rationale given is because taxis do street hails. But really, how many street hails are there nowadays, for the taxis? I think a lot of them are based on bookings as well.

For parents with young children, I really doubt that in today's context, they would actually do street hail. They would also book the taxis rather than go down on the streets and try and flag one down.

I thank the Member for his push for this. Safety for all people, especially young children, is important. MOT will continue to monitor the situation. I think while safety is important, but we really also need to consider other implications, especially when it affects the livelihood of people.

One option we could look at, I think, if we see that there is a need for it, would be good to look at maybe ride-hail type of journeys to look into. But we will continue to consult and work with the different stakeholders as we look into this area.

4 Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim asked the Prime Minister in light of the rise in fraudulent credit card transactions, whether the Government has considered encouraging more widespread wholesale insurance for banks and other credit card issuers that will permit easier write-offs for relatively smaller transaction amounts.

Assoc Prof Jamus Lim asked if banks and credit card issuers should be encouraged to obtain wholesale insurance cover for card fraud losses, so that they can write-off smaller losses incurred as a result of fraud.

There is little demand from credit card issuers to purchase insurance to cover fraud-related losses arising from their credit card portfolios.

Instead of insurance, which will lead to higher costs for consumers, it is more important for credit card issuers and customers to play their respective parts in preventing fraud.

Credit card issuers such as banks have invested considerable resources in building fraud surveillance systems and controls to combat card fraud. These systems have been enhanced over the years in response to changing technologies and methods used by the fraudsters. Today, major banks share fraud trends with one another, enabling them to continually refine fraud rules to tackle the latest fraud techniques.

Customers should keep their cards safe and immediately report to their issuing banks if they lose their cards. A timely report will cap a customer's liability at $100 unless he is subsequently found to have acted fraudulently or negligently. For online payments, customers should not disclose credit card details or One-Time PIN, or OTP, to anyone, and should practise strong cyber hygiene such as by regularly updating the security patches and anti-malware software on their devices. I find myself repeating this in Parliament and reminding people: practise good cyber hygiene.

For unauthorised payments to merchants that are not secured by OTP, banks have the right to recover the lost amounts fully from the merchants, and hence customers will not bear any loss.

We will continue to monitor the fraud situation and ensure that banks do their part to provide their customers with clear steps to take in order to protect themselves from such losses. In addition, the industry Code of Practice for Banks on Credit Cards issued by the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS), sets out the liability of cardholders under various circumstances, is currently being reviewed to consider emerging scenarios for fraud and further risk mitigating measures.

I thank the Minister for his comprehensive response and for sharing with us about how the system is being continually refined. I have just one supplementary question for which some motivational context behind the original question, I think, would be useful.

The US has the Fair Credit Reporting Act which, by limiting the liability on consumers, has actually shifted a significant part of the burden of fraud detection and policing away from the consumer and government, and back toward credit card providers. Even, as the Minister had shared, we have some elements of this in place, I think the routine reporting of fraud and in our own Meet-the-People's sessions, when we have residents coming into us, fearful for the loss of their life savings due to fraud, makes me feel that consumers are often still in lurch for liability for unauthorised transactions on their credit card accounts.

So, to build on my question, I wonder if the MAS has considered other forms of regulation that would potentially shift the burden of responsibility away from consumers constantly just improving their cyber hygiene, and toward better deployment of fraud detection technology and tools by financial institutions because they are held more liable for fraud-related losses.

I mentioned just now, I keep reminding people to practise cyber hygiene, but that is by no means the only thing that we do. As I mentioned, there is a system that strikes a balance between the liability on the banks as well as on the part of consumers. In fact, for consumers, so long as they are not negligent, they are responsible, they report quickly, the losses they suffer is very much minimised and these are all encapsulated in the industry Code of Practice for Banks on Credit Cards. As I mentioned in my reply, it is also being reviewed.

So, I know we are all plagued by cyber crimes and scams. We are all victims of it. Every day, we open our emails, we see some of them. So, we will continue to be there and we will continue to have to strike a balance – educating but at the same time protecting consumers, but also to be fair to banks and the industry. This is something that is evolving and we will continue to work on it.

5 Ms Ng Ling Ling asked asked the Minister for Home Affairs given that 15 out of 18 pedestrian fatalities in 2020 involve seniors aged 60 and above and with half of the cases due to jaywalking, what else will the Ministry consider doing to improve road safety measures as the population continues to age.

Madam, the Traffic Police (TP) puts in significant effort to try to bring down the number of accidents involving elderly pedestrians. TP partners Senior Activity Centres and Lion Befrienders to educate the elderly on road safety. It launched the Eye Care Kit in February 2021, which allows elderly pedestrians to make a self-assessment on their eye health and encourages them to seek early intervention to address any issues.

As mentioned in MHA's Committee of Supply debate, MHA will be enhancing enforcement against irresponsible motorists in Silver Zones. Motorists who commit offences at Silver Zones, such as speeding or using mobile communicative devices while driving, will incur two additional demerit points on top of the usual demerit points for their offence. They will also be liable for an additional $100 in composition fine. The aim is to encourage motorists to exercise greater caution when in areas frequented by elderly pedestrians. Further details will be announced later this year.

6 Ms Ng Ling Ling asked the Minister for Home Affairs in light of the fatal car accident along Tanjong Pagar, whether the Traffic Police will consider more enforcement actions at roads that are conducive for car racing especially in the late nights.

Madam, the Traffic Police (TP) conducts regular enforcement operations at known hotspots. Further, when public feedback is received on such activities, TP will also assess and where necessary mount additional enforcement operations.

The penalties for conducting illegal speed trials include a fine, mandatory imprisonment and forfeiture of the vehicle. First-time offenders are liable for a fine not less than $1,000 and not more than $2,000 and mandatory imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months. Repeat offenders are liable for a fine not less than $2,000 and not more than $3,000 and mandatory imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months. Police may seize the vehicle used in the illegal speed trials and the Court may order its forfeiture.

From 2015 to 2017, there were five cases of illegal speed trials and 10 persons were convicted. There were four cases from 2018 to 2020, involving 31 persons arrested, which are pending investigations or court proceedings.

First, I would like to thank the Minister of State for his reply. I would like to ask the Minister of State if there is an overview of Traffic Police of the roads that are more prone to speed trials and whether there are more prevention measures that can be put in place besides enforcement, to deter. Reasons being that there have been increasing numbers of a residents giving feedback of certain stretches of roads that are very prone to car racing into the midnight. So, my question is whether there are some preventive measures that MHA will consider?

I thank the Member for the supplementary question. Indeed, we have a strategy to look at, not only illegal speed trials, but also the overall road safety aspects of how we can keep our roads safe, and at the same time, that road users are able to use the roads to carry out their daily activities.

So, with regard to speed trials, we receive feedback and we also conduct enforcement operations. One is when we received the feedback through our sensing and intelligence that we get, not only from the community, but also from people who are working with us and our stakeholders. We know of the areas that are prone to have speed trials and conduct enforcement operations regularly in such areas.

For the Member's concern, we have received feedback relating to some of the issues that she faced in her constituency in relation to illegal speed trials. We have been and continue to conduct enforcement operations.

Order. End of Question Time. The Clerk will now proceed to read the order of the day.

[Pursuant to Standing Order No 22(3), Written Answers to Question Nos 8-11 on the Order Paper are reproduced in the Appendix. Question No 7 have been postponed to the sitting of Parliament on 5 Mar 2021.]

[(proc text) Order read for consideration in Committee of Supply [5th Allotted Day]. (proc text)]

[Mdm Deputy Speaker in the Chair]

Head L (cont) –

[(proc text) Resumption of Debate on Question [3 March 2021], (proc text)]

[(proc text) "That the total sum to be allocated for Head L of the Estimates be reduced by $100." – [Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang]. (proc text)]

Mdm Chair, the annual ice loss from Greenland Ice Sheet rose seven-fold annually during the last decade and the Antarctic ice loss nearly quadruple per year in the last decade as well. To meet the expected long-term sea level rise, the minimum land reclamation level in Singapore was raised from three to four metres above mean sea level in 2011. We have been continually shoring up our coastal areas, especially those which were reclaimed not so long ago.

Increasingly we are feeling the impact of rising sea waters. During the 2019 National Day Rally (NDR), Prime Minister presented the long-term plan of coastal protection against rising sea levels. He mentioned that from the city to our east coast areas are low-lying grounds that will be vulnerable to flooding when sea level rises. One of the exciting projects he mentioned was the building of polders following the example of the Netherlands along the coastline. These are seawalls built further out at sea and the water is then pumped out. It will create new land that could be used for housing and other purposes.

The alternative is even more exciting. This is to reclaim a series of islands offshore, from Marina East all the way to Changi, then join them up with barrages and create a huge freshwater reservoir similar to Marina Reservoir. In this way, we can further enhance our water resilience.

Prime Minister mentioned that these will be huge investments amounting up to $100 billion and we need to long-term planning up to a 100 years. Last year alone, the Government spent $100 billion in four Budgets. Since the projects will yield huge benefits for our country in the long term, can we consider bringing in these large infrastructure projects forward so we can realise the benefits even earlier? It also helps to promote and build our SMEs in their capabilities as well.

Building polders and creating new land that can also be sold and raise funds for the project. Given our finite land and sea space, how will the building of the polders and offshore islands affect our shipping lanes? Will our Navy have any more waters to sail after the construction?

Can the Ministry provide an update on this very exciting project, with what has been done since 2019? And I would like to ask the Minister whether can he share with the House how does our Government ensure that coastal adaptation measures are cost-effective and adequately resourced, given this is a long-term and large-scale effort?

Like what our Prime Minister said during the NDR 2019, we must make this effort now. Otherwise, one day, our children and grandchildren will be ashamed of what our generation did not do.

Madam, growing up, we teach our children that Singapore is an island city-state and many of us have fond memories by the beach or enjoy fishing, boating or watersports. Our blue spaces are precious and debris pollution, coastal development and high usage of these spaces can have lasting negative impact on our marine environment. When we factor in climate change and the fact that only about 30% of our island is only less than five metres above the mean sea level, I believe that coastal protection needs to be a priority for now and for future generations. The announcement of the PUB assuming the role of the nation's Coastal Protection Agency in 2020 is heartening, as efforts are coordinated.

Can the Minister update on PUB's effort, since assuming this role, and what are the future plans? What are some examples of coastal adaptation solutions that will be examined under the site specific studies mentioned and to what extent will nature based solutions be considered as we must be careful about reclamation. And will there be a coastal protection masterplan similar to the Green Building masterplan?

Mdm Chair, flash flooding has steadily become more frequent in the last 10 years. With climate change, we can expect such extreme weather events to become more common. As we continue to convert more of our forests into developments, we lose the many protective benefits of forests in moderating the impacts of extreme weather. For example, forests help slow the flow of water into our drainage system, reducing flooding risks. Therefore, when floods happen, we cannot point the finger solely at climate change, when we ourselves have been partly to blame. As we cut down more forests, we will have to spend more on ensuring that our physical drainage infrastructure and flood response systems can keep up.

While the Ministry has an established monitoring and response system for flooding, what are the plans to address the root causes of flooding in vulnerable areas? Does the Ministry's flood protection plans adequately account for possible future increases in extreme rainfall?

Madam, climate change has resulted in more unpredictable and intense rainfall culminating in more frequent incidences of flash floods around Singapore. Just last November, flash floods occurred in three areas and water levels in drains and canals rose to 90% of their capacity in eight other locations.

Beyond flash floods causing destruction and inconveniences, the incessant rainfall had also resulted in the uprooting of trees, posing safety concerns for Singaporeans. Thus, it is pivotal that we have a comprehensive and coordinated understanding on Singapore's level of flood resilience.

I would like to ask the Minister what is Singapore's plan in ensuring we have adequate inland flood management system to handle the increasing unpredictable weather? I would like to raise three areas for MSE's consideration.

One, improvements in existing drainage systems and buildings in low-lying areas. Many of these flash floods occur in low-lying areas with some in private estates. Unlike the public housing, the private estates do not have a dedicated Town Council to handle and address these municipal issues. Would any support be provided to enhance the infrastructure on drainage system in existing private estates and older buildings?

Two, periodic assessments of efficacy of measures to allow for nimble, adaptive changes. Since the BCA Coastal Adaptation Study was concluded in 2019, can Minister provide an update on the measures undertaken in response to this study? From the findings, are there more areas that need to be further reviewed and what would the periodic assessment on the efficacy of the measures entail?

Three, introducing contingency measures. While extensive measures have been adopted to protect our coastal areas and reduce and flood risks, however, with the best of efforts, we are always vulnerable to the forces of nature. Do we have any contingency measures in place should an incessant heavy downpour coupled with high tide conditions and maximum canal holding capacity coincide? I suggest we increase the vegetation topsoil to serve as absorbent layer for water drainage especially in areas like park connectors along the water banks or planting along the roads.

Mr Gan Thiam Poh, please take your three cuts together.

With climate change, comes more extreme weather conditions. Singapore is no exception and we are experiencing more unpredictable and intense rainfalls. Going forward, we can continue to expect more of such sudden and heavy precipitation. What are some of PUB's plans to mitigate inland floods in the face of this challenge?

As we continue to develop and become more densely built up, how can we ensure that we have enough green lungs and basins to absorb the surface run-off? Do our reservoirs and catchment tanks have sufficient capacities?

What upgrading and assistance measures have we implemented to protect and help residences and shophouse in older, low-lying areas? Would the Ministry provide an update on the safety measures, such as higher barricades for pavements next to drains, for the protection of pedestrians during floods?

Temperatures have been rising in Singapore, and our residents have been feeling it outdoors and in their homes. There are some measures that we, as individuals, can take to help reduce heat emissions.

Firstly, we should reduce the use of air-conditioning and switch to fans whenever possible. Air-con cools an interior by releasing the waste heat to the outside. Adjusting the air-con to a comfortable temperature of around or just above 25 degree Celsius instead of blasting colder air, will help reduce the amount of heat that it generates to the exterior.

The use of refrigeration has a similar impact on external temperatures. Reducing our demand for non-essential cold items, for example, drinks, ice-cream and desserts, is another way to help reduce heat emissions. Would the Ministry advise what more can we do to reduce heat emissions from human activities?

Increasingly, due to human activities, such as transportation and intense use of air-conditioning, Singapore is experiencing worsening Urban Heat Island effect, in short it is called UHI. This is generally understood to describe the air temperature difference between urban and rural areas. However, in the Singapore context, it would mean the difference between our built-up and green areas.

How will Singapore's urban temperature rise as a result of global warming, and how would this exacerbate the UHI effect? How does the Government measure the extent of the UHI effect and has any research been conducted? Which sectors are the main contributors to the urban heat island effect in Singapore and what has the Government done to mitigate or reduce it? Does the Ministry have any new measures to reduce this and how can we, as individuals, contribute to this effort?

Mr Louis Ng, please take your four cuts together.

Madam, I have asked several times in this House for the Government to disclose data on top emitters in Singapore. As I mentioned during the climate change Motion, Singaporeans increasingly live their lives in a sustainable way. They should be given more information with which to make their consumption decisions.

The UK already requires all big companies to include emissions data in their annual reports, and the EU provides large amounts of emissions data on all facilities level across its member states. The German Institute of Economic Research has found that such company-level disclosures work, reducing emissions by 17% permanently.

The Government has shared that company-level emissions may reveal confidential business performance. In this case, I propose that we publish a ranking of the top emitters without sharing their exact emissions level. This allows the public to make more informed consumption decisions without compromising the business confidentiality of our businesses.

Will the Ministry consider this proposal? It strikes a fair balance between the trade-offs.

As Singapore pursues its Smart Nation initiative, we must also be smart about how we manage our e-waste. We generate more than 60,000 tonnes of e-waste annually. This astounding amount of e-waste will only increase. If not handled properly, e-waste contains small amounts of harmful substances that can threaten our health and our environment.

I am heartened that the Government has been building up its e-waste recycling facilities and capabilities. I have been raising this issue in Parliament since 2016 and I am glad that MSE announced that the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) framework for e-waste will be implemented from July this year. Can MSE share whether we are on track to meet this target? Can MSE also share its plans on how it will raise awareness on the EPR and make recycling e-waste convenient for all, so that we can all do our part to make the EPR a success?

Last year, I shared with the House about the Zero Waste Masterplan in Nee Soon East. I talked about how we had saved 39,792 disposables since the launch of our Zero Waste Masterplan in April 2019. COVID-19, unfortunately, threw a spanner in the works but we will restart the Zero Waste Masterplan once we can.

I commend MSE for putting together a diverse Citizens' Workgroup to tackle this issue of excessive consumption of disposables. How will MSE incorporate the recommendations from the recently concluded Citizens' Workgroup into its plans to better manage disposables in Singapore? Will the public service take the lead by committing to end the use of all disposables at all public service events?

The Ministry also announced that it will put in place a Deposit Refund Scheme for beverage containers by 2022 as the first phase of the EPR framework for packaging waste, including plastics. Can the MSE share more details on the progress on this?

Lastly, food waste is one of the biggest sources of waste in Singapore. In 2019, we generated over 700,000 tonnes of food waste.

I am currently working on a Private Member’s Bill to tackle food waste and hope to introduce a Good Samaritan's Food Donation Bill. We have completed our first round of consultations and I am glad to have the strong support from civil society and industry players.

I am also glad to see the Government taking active steps to address food waste. MSE announced that it will introduce mandatory food waste segregation requirements for large commercial and industrial premises. Beyond segregation, it is also important for companies to be aware of the amount of food waste they dispose of. Food waste represents a cost to companies. Data about food waste generated will help companies better manage their processes to reduce waste. This is both a win for sustainability and for the companies’ bottom lines.

Will MSE consider requiring companies that have to segregate food waste for treatment to also report the amount of food waste segregated?

Mdm Chairperson, with Singaporeans increasingly aware of the need to be environmentally conscious, we should bolster our fight against the use of plastics. In the Green Plan, one of the key pillars is sustainable living, where policies will be geared towards propelling us into a zero-waste nation powered by a circular economy. Physical recycling is the main channel to reuse plastic, but our current recycling rate of only 4% for plastics is poor. To tackle our plastics waste issue, we will, therefore, also need a reduction of plastics consumption, especially single-use plastics. When we are just focusing solely on recycling, this neglect on reducing our waste is what drives production which, in turn, creates carbon footprint.

To put matters in perspective, a recent research by researchers from NTU and their colleagues in Finland has shown how single-use plastic bags have a global warming potential 14 times more than a reusable plastic bag. I understand that the citizens' workgroup on reducing excessive consumption of disposables was convened and it called for a fee for each plastic bag if they take three or more of them at supermarkets. I wish to lend my support to this call and ask that the Ministry also study a single-use plastics charge across retailers and F&B outlets, phased in over five years, to encourage a reduction in plastics waste and look for alternatives.

Concerns raised on the potential negative effects on lower income households can be tackled by having a rebate scheme. The authorities can also work with charity groups and non-profit organisations to give out complimentary reusable bags. I repeat my call in my Budget debate speech last year for mindsets to shift in the way we consume, to only use what we need to use. In supermarkets or shops, can we use more of good quality reusable shopping bags like this one, something that I have been using for the last nearly 20 years? If we only need to use, say, one or two plastic bags for refuse disposal a day, can we not take more plastic bags than we need? In this way, we may end up using fewer plastic bags and may still have enough bags for our refuse.

Mdm Chair, the NEA's newly-launched Toilet Improvement Programme (TIP) extends grants to Town Councils at an amount capped between $60,000 and $90,000. The grant seeks to raise the hygiene and cleaning standards of public toilets. A corollary aim of the TIP is to encourage the removal of smoking corners. For the grant to be disbursed, Town Councils have to ensure the renovation works to their toilets – provided they are approved for innovation – are completed by 31 March 2022.

Madam, I seek clarity on the policy reasons behind tying the upgrading of toilets with the removal of smoking corners at hawker centres. While the grant can be tapped upon should a smoking corner not be removed in a hawker centre, the quantum of the grant is quite significantly reduced.

In designing the grant parameters, what impact does NEA foresee in the event of the removal of smoking corners from hawker centres with existing smoking corners? Specifically, what is the assessment of the displacement effect of smokers from hawker centres out into the community?

While I appreciate NEA and the medical advice would lean on the very reasonable hope that some smokers would quit the habit as a result of the removal of smoking corners, there is a greater likelihood, at least in the immediate term, of smokers migrating from hawker centres to other areas in the community. This includes smoking in the comfort of their own homes, potentially leading to more nuisance complaints from their fellow neighbours.

To this end, what is the policy connection between toilet upgrading and the removal of smoking corners? Quite simply, the TIP grant and its objectives, while independently commendable, will create the prospect of new disamenities in other Town Council-managed areas and, possibly, between HDB flat dwellers. Town Councils may well have to create new smoking areas somewhere else close to the hawker centres shortly after the grant is given to the Town Council, or even reinstate a smoking corner in the market after the grant has been disbursed. Would it not be a better policy for NEA to tie the TIP grant with specific compulsory criteria related to the renovation of toilets that are energy-saving, green and come with lower life-cycle costs, in line with the Government's Green Plan and targets?

To this end, some of the recommended features in the TIP include the toilet feedback management system – something I believe is akin to those found in shopping centres and/or the airport where users rate toilet cleanliness. Other additions NEA has recommended include the installation of toilet pedestal mounted bidets.

Sir, public toilets at hawker centres are heavily utilised. It is open to question whether some of these recommended features under the TIP are practical in the long term. It is difficult to imagine how much care must be taken by a cleaner to hygienically clean a toilet pedestal mounted bidet and, separately, how easily such a feature can be damaged in a heavy-use setting. I would like to make two suggestions to the scheme, along with some other questions.

Firstly, extend the programme beyond March 2022, by when toilets are expected to be completed to qualify for the grant.

Secondly, NEA should conduct a pilot scheme at a very heavily-utilised public toilet in a busy hawker centre to field trial and assess the viability of the recommended TIP features. It would be important to study the steady state condition of the pilot toilet at this hawker centre, which should be perceptible after a few months of use, allowing for a better perspective on the effectiveness of the measures proposed. With hawker culture recently added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, it would be important to get this done right so that a broadly consistent toilet hygiene standard is consistent across all hawker centres in Singapore.

Thirdly, the TIP also envisages an enhanced maintenance regime, the details of which have not been communicated to Town Councils. Does NEA envision an increase in manpower to achieve the cleanliness standards required?

Finally, can I also check whether market associations or committees were spoken to, along with Town Councils that manage NEA markets, for their feedback before the TIP scheme was considered? And in light of the tiered nature of the grant, how many hawker centres in Singapore currrently do not have smoking areas and, out of these, how many are newly constructed hawker centres and how many are legacy hawker centres?

Mdm Chairman, as we build more offices, factories, medical institutions, eating places, the demand for manpower in the environmental service sector will continue to rise and it will rise to a level that will not be sustainable, unless we tap on technology and automate. One good example comes to mind is NEA's $10.8 million Environmental Robotics Programme, with the support of National Robotics R&D Programme, for the development of robotics solutions to improve productivity. Through various agencies, including NTUC, the Ministry is working with them to support SMEs to build up their capabilities, carry out our product development and carry out job redesigning and so forth. I hope that the Ministry can speed up this particular programme and put more resources into it.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has put even more demands on this industry now as public hygiene and cleanliness come into the spotlight. Almost overnight, to control the spread of the pandemic, the use of face masks, gloves, plastics and various containers used for food deliveries has become an environmental nightmare. The indiscriminate disposal of face masks and gloves, especially if not properly done so, could choke up our waterways and pose a hazard to our environment. The situation was exacerbated during the circuit breaker period when many of the foreign workers in this particular sector could not work. Water got clogged in the drains, open parks and, in many areas, grass was not cut, mosquito breeding and outbreaks of dengue clusters became another hazard.

Then there is the volume of waste coming from medical centres, hospitals which needs to be addressed, ranging from syringes, face masks to disposable personal protective equipment. Are the existing waste facilities able to cope with this unusual volume of medical waste?

As the COVID-19 period prolongs, may I also ask what is the Ministry’s plan to support and help the industry to transform so that they are able to better cope with the new challenges they face in this particular sector?

Mdm Chairman, for the past few years, I have been involved in litter picking in my constituency. Sadly, I do not see much improvement in the state of cleanliness in the estate. My grassroots leaders and I still see cigarette butts, empty cigarette packets, drink bottles, plastic bottles, plastic bags, used tissues, used face masks thrown all over the floor. At hawker centres, you will see chopstick wrappers strewn all over the ground as well.

Despite the increased number of summonses issued against litterbugs, I feel that the littering situation has not improved in the past five years? If this is the case, NEA should consider other options to signal that littering is not acceptable.

I urge NEA to consider amending the law to allow imposition of a corrective work order for all littering offenders, instead of only for the second offender. NEA must send a message to all litterbugs that their acts of littering have negatively affected the environment and that the litter must be picked up by others. Hopefully, with a Corrective Work Order stint, the offender will see the mess caused by their own actions and acknowledge their role to keep the environment clean. Why should the average Singapore citizen have to live with a dirty environment caused by a few inconsiderate litterbugs?

Ms Rachel Ong. Please take your three cuts together.

Thank you, Madam. My first cut relates to fostering individual ownership for a clean Singapore.

Good personal and public hygiene are our first two lines of defence against diseases. Last year, the pandemic had catapulted to public attention new standards of hygiene required in the fight against public health threats. It was timely that MSE launched the SG Clean movement in February 2020 to galvanise a whole-of-nation effort to strengthen cleanliness and public hygiene in Singapore. Over the years, the Ministry has rolled out different initiatives to raise cleanliness and hygiene standards in public spaces and promote positive social norms, such as the SG Clean Quality Mark. Sustained collective action will be imperative to inculcate a sense of personal and social responsibility in the community. Could a Ministry share more on its efforts and progress of the various initiatives to soster individual and social responsibility?

My second cut relates to the transformation of our Environmental Services industry, specifically Pest Management. The Pest Management industry plays a critical role in securing premises against vectors and vector-borne diseases in Singapore and in safeguarding our public health. In 2019, the Ministry announced that the Pest Management sector will be integrated with the Environmental Services Industry Transformation Map. Many regard this to be timely as this will also accord opportunities for our local enterprises and provide meaningful jobs for Singaporeans. I would like to ask the Ministry for an update on its efforts in supporting the industry in the transformation in light of the new challenges.

My third cut relates to sustaining the hawker culture. Singaporeans enjoy hawker food. Many of us celebrated when our hawker culture was recognised by UNESCO in December 2020. The Ministry had previously announced that 20 new hawker centres will be built. Seven centres have been completed and the remainder 13 are to follow. We understand that the key reason we engage operators through the Socially-conscious Enterprise Hawker Centre (SEHC) model was to leverage their private sector experience so as to better improve the management of hawker centres and meet our community needs.

The initial implementation saw resistance from hawkers due to higher cost and inflexible contract conditions that had to be worked out. Since then, the Government has announced that the remaining 13 centres will be run under the SEHC model. How will NEA continue to work with social enterprise operators to ensure that the success of these new hawker centres while also factoring in the earlier feedback from hawkers relating to the challenges they face under the SEHC model?

Mdm Chair, we salute our hawkers who had toiled to provide affordable food for generations of Singaporeans and we congratulate them, our Government and all supporters on our achievement in getting Singapore’s hawker culture inscribed on the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list.

However, to protect and preserve the heritage and traditions of our hawker culture in an authentic manner is challenging.

Hawker centres were built rapidly throughout the 1970s and early 1980s to resettle the street hawkers and to cater for the demand of the population in the new satellite towns, but they have actually been declining in popularity since the late 1980s as Singaporeans looked for a better eating environment. As a result, the number of hawker centres peaked in 1985 at about 140 and began to decline to about 100 by the turn of the millennium.

As our F&B scene become more sophisticated and diverse but also more expensive, hawker centres remain a source of good, affordable meals for Singaporeans.

However, high rentals and running costs have caught up making it very difficult for new hawkers to enter the market. Even allowing some hawker centres to be run by social enterprises did not solve the high running cost problem. But the most pressing problem of the hawker trade is to replace an entire generation of retiring hawkers. Today, the median age of hawkers is 60 years. Many of them do not have successors because their children mostly do not want to take over the back-breaking trade and it is also their wish not to have their children taking over from them.

There is also the inherent clash between providing affordable meals which means that the hawker trade will be of low profitability and attracting young Singaporeans into the industry. Hence, there may be a need to review the policy of positioning our hawker food as a source of cheap meals.

Perhaps our focus should be on the preservation of our food culture and recipes, much like the intellectual property in other industries, whilst allowing the form of the hawker centre to evolve in tandem with society.

But above all, when promoting a hawker culture, we should not forget to take care of our ageing hawkers to ensure that they have a well-deserved retirement for preserving our local food culture and recipes through their decades of hard work.

Madam, I would like to suggest to make our hawker culture industry more inclusive, compassionate by re-introducing the Hardship Scheme for hawker centre stalls. This scheme was started in mid-1970s and was meant for those aged 40 and above whose family income fell under stipulated threshold and who had dependants to support to rent hawker stalls at subsidised rates.

I made the call to introduce this scheme in 2016. The Ministry responded that the scheme was discontinued in the early 1990s as was deemed ineffective due to low take-up rate and there is no intention to revive it.

I am repeating my call today as within the last four years, I have met a number of needy residents, a couple of them are ex-offenders, who shared that they have culinary skills and expressed their aspiration to run hawker stall with an affordable operating cost.

The hardship scheme may not be a standalone scheme. It could be a sub-scheme under the Incubation Stall Programme or ISP, specifically targeting two groups – needy Singaporeans and ex-offenders which are specifically beneficiaries of ComCare scheme and Yellow Ribbon Project. I suggest that the scheme be re-introduced and to implemented as a Socially-conscious Enterprise Hawker Centre (SEHC) model which would be congruous with its social mission, a point which Senior of State Dr Amy Khor has alluded to before in this House.

Providing such opportunity and support to needy individuals and ex-offenders, among us, via the hardship scheme for hawker centre stall is, indeed, a very noble social mission.

Mr Gan Thiam Poh, please take your three cuts together.

Our efforts to honour our hawker trade had culminated in the successful inscription of our Hawker Culture on the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. We must continue to support and sustain the hawker trade so that it will prosper for many more generations to come.

NEA and SSG launched the Hawkers’ Development Programme last year to attract and train prospective hawkers, aspiring hawkers. I would like to ask if the programme will ensure the teaching of diverse heritage recipes and preparation methods.

I support the Government’s effort to match older retiring hawkers without successors with suitable aspiring hawkers, so that they can pass on their crafts or stalls. How would the Government identify these hawkers, and what will be done to support both the retiring and aspiring hawkers during these transitions?

Our hawker centres are our national canteens and provide a wide range of affordable and delicious food. They are highly desired in neighbourhoods and many residents in the newer estates request for them.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted our everyday lives significantly, including our construction sector. Many building projects had to be postponed and works are being delayed. I would like to ask the Government how has COVID-19 impacted the progress of the construction of new hawker centres? Would the Ministry give an update on the new completion dates of the centres in the pipeline? I would also like to find out if the new centres will continue to come under the Socially-conscious Enterprise Hawker Centre (SEHC) model?

One of the most important qualities of a civilised society is public hygiene. Each one of us need to step up to keep our environment clean. Over the years, the Government had conducted several campaigns to encourage individuals to do their part. The encouragement include keeping premises clean and pest-free, refraining from littering, keeping toilets clean and dry and so on.

I agree with many concerned citizens that we need collective action to achieve our vision of a clean Singapore, instead of a "cleaned Singapore" relying on an army of cleaners to pick up after us. We should aim for high cleanliness standards even after the pandemic is over. In what other ways and through which channels would the Ministry tap on to continue to encourage socially desirable behaviours, and foster individual and social responsibility?

Ms Nadia Ahmad Samdin, please take your four cuts together.

Thank you, Madam. These cuts are about food.

First, our hawker centres. The recent recognition of Singapore's Hawker culture as an intangible cultural heritage under UNESCO and the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us many lessons about our wet markets and hawker centres. Wet markets are such an important part of our culture and I recently had the opportunity to interact with two young women Pam and Tahira, who initiated the Pass the Pasar Movement to encourage more Singaporeans to visit our wet markets and share the experiences.

Such efforts continue to make these precious spaces relevant for the next generation and, as someone from the younger generation I disagree that hawker centres are less popular among my generation today as many of us "tabao"-ed these places during the circuit breaker.

Will the Government be considering further enhancements to the infrastructure of our hawker centres to ensure they will: firstly, be safe and clean; and secondly, continue to be relevant and exciting for our people from all walks of life.

As we embark on our sustainability push, will the Government also be looking into how to make hawker centres and wet markets more sustainable in the long run and reduce food wastage at scale?

COVID-19 has shown that food security is of utmost importance. During critical periods when supply chains could be disrupted, the delivery of vital goods could be impaired and in Singapore we are investing in increasing local food production as a safeguard.

In 2020, SFA launched the 30 by 30 Express Grant to help farms accelerate the ramp up in local food production. What is the progress of the farms that were awarded the 30 by 30 Express Grant and successful tenderers of the agri-land and MCSP plots and are we on track to meeting our goals? How will the Government ensure that the new support schemes meet painpoints and are effective in helping our farmers to grow the local agri-food sector capabilities? Can we also have the Government's assurance that the boost in locally produced food will go first and foremost towards meeting domestic consumption, or if they are grown for export, will that count towards our "30 by 30" target?

As of 2019, there are around 220 licensed land-based and sea-based farms in Singapore. The Deputy Prime Minister highlighted Eco-Ark, our first high-tech fish farm, which is able to produce 166 tons of fish a year. Achieving our aquaculture goals should be done in a sustainable and resource efficient manner that is friendly to our marine environment.

Some of our sea-based farms are located near community spaces. For example, near Bendera Bay in the Southern Islands. For such farms in close proximity to our blue spaces, I hope we are extra mindful of the potential impact. Could the Government elaborate how close containment sea-based farming systems are more energy efficient and environmentally friendly than traditional sea-based farming systems? Does the Government have additional plans to increase the resilience of the aquaculture sector? And does the Government plan to have support for the labour market to adjust to these new technologies?

Finally, on safeguarding food safety. It has been more than a year since the formation of SFA. How has the consolidation of food functions into a single agency benefited the industry?

As we evolve into a new norm, food delivery services have also played an important role over the past year with more people handling food before it reaches the consumer. Beyond consumers indicating how many stars out of five on food delivery platforms, can we indicate cleanliness and hygiene, for example, and will delivery riders be equipped and trained to better handle food?

Mdm Chair, during the COS debate last year, the Ministry announced that it would masterplan Lim Chu Kang to optimise food production using our limited farming area. Given the potential impact on livelihoods and the environment, how had the relevant stakeholders been involved in the masterplanning process?

Will these experienced farmers and their staff be invited to participate in the new plans and be given assistance to change or upgrade their operations so that they can be part of the new production initiatives? For those who choose to retire or discontinue, what assistance or compensation will be provided for them?

Will there be any disruptions to our food production during this transition period.

Next, I declare my interest as the Council Member of the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants and I am working with a Singaporean bank. For a new eco-system to flourish, availability of financing is important. Will the Ministry consider working with MAS and Association of Banks of Singapore to develop Singapore into a global, if not a regional green trade financing hub.

Next, concepts like sustainable financing and carbon credits are still relatively new to many local companies which are unsure of the accounting treatment. Thus, I also urge the Ministry to work with the Accountancy body or Singapore Accountancy Commission to formulate a prescriptive set of accounting standards and framework. I am confident we can be the credible accountancy and financing hub for sustainability.

Mdm Chair, the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic certainly jolted many in Singapore about the importance of a robust supply chain system in place. The scenes of panic buying at the supermarkets are still fresh in our mind from last year.

As an island state, while we are ranked as number one in the EIU Global Food Security Index against countries like US, Switzerland, Norway and Germany. But this does not give us comfort when you start to read about countries shutting down their borders, sea and airports and also thousands of workers, farmers and truckers stricken by the virus.

Ninety percent of our food comes from overseas, and we buy from 170 places worldwide.

Yes, during this pandemic, we did well. We were able to draw on our stockpile each time the shelves were emptied. We were able to ensure not only food but medical and petrol supply were flowing and essential services were not disrupted, giving assurances to the population.

Now that the pandemic has gone global, I am sure many countries who did not do their maths would be scrambling to get their supplies of essential food stuff and others. The market would be more competitive for everyone.

Disruption in supply can not only be caused by a global pandemic. Today, we live in an age of increasing uncertainty. We have in recent years seen unforeseeable disasters, some man-made and others natural. For example, wars, terrorist attacks, earthquakes, tsunamis, epidemics and nuclear reactor accidents, and even climate change resulting in crop failure or destruction of farmland due to wild fires.

As a land-scarce country, limited manpower supply and not exactly having the best climate for growing crops, is it realistic for us to aim for 30% of our food supply being produced locally by 2030? Maybe we should aim to get Temasek and our other local enterprises to increase their overseas investments in food production, in food supply so that we can further enhance our food security together with our neighbours.

Are we building up a pool of talents in the field of agriculture technology? Can Minister share with the House what is the Government's overall plan to strengthen our food security, to prepare for any unforeseen supply chain disruption?

Madam, in December last year, Singapore approved the sale of Eat Just's cultured chicken. We became the first country in the world to grant regulatory approval for the sale of cell-cultured meat.

Increasingly, with the growing demand for meat substitutes, we will see more novel foods for sale, such as plant-based proteins, cultured or lab-grown meat and edible farmed insects. Without the history of safe use, how can we ensure that new food production technologies, such as lab-grown meat, are safe for our consumers?

In the past, we had referred to the guidelines and the experience of other nations with bigger populations. As a pioneer, we do not have such data on human consumption to depend on. How will the Ministry assure the public?

Mdm Chairman, water usage in Singapore is about 430 million gallons a day. This consumption rate will likely double in 2060. Taking into consideration that water treatment technologies can be energy intensive, what are PUB's targets to improve its energy efficiency of water treatment?

In 2020, PUB announced that it has commenced the construction of the 60 megawatt-peak floating solar photovoltaic system on Tengeh Reservoir. What is the progress of that project and how many other reservoirs will be similarly equipped with floating solar panels?

In 2018, PUB and NEA announced that Tuas Nexus will be first in Singapore to treat both used water and food waste in the same facility to generate bio-gas for electricity production. Are there more plans to develop similar facilities to enhance sustainability? I hope the Minister for Sustainability and the Environment would shed light on these queries.

Mdm Chairman, despite new challenges to our water supply, Singapore has been successful in closing the water loop. We are collecting every drop of water and recycling it where possible. Some of it is purified into NEWater, one of our four national taps and recycled into our water supply. This is made possible with PUB's robust network of tunnels and sewers, including the Deep Tunnel Sewerage System, which funnels used water from households and industries to our water reclamation plants for treatment. This water is then further treated into NEWater in the NEWater factories.

I will talk about three areas in enhancing our water resources.

First, safeguarding used water resources. Used water is a precious resource that must be protected. Some companies irresponsibly discharge toxic waste and prohibited substances into our sewers. This could potentially disrupt the water reclamation process, and even compromise our NEWater supply. What are the Ministry's plans to deter such harmful and dangerous practices? In 2019, it was revealed that over a five-year period, nearly 120 companies were fined for illegal waste discharge. Some were even repeated offences. Do the penalties serve as adequate deterrence? Will there be more surveillance and harsher deterrent measures to protect our water supply?

Second, we need to improve our water efficiency. Singapore's success in re-using water is borne out of necessity, as we have very limited water resources. We cannot rest on our laurels, as we face significant challenges ahead. Our water demand continues to rise and is projected to almost double by 2060. Most of this demand will be driven by non-domestic use. Many older buildings which have older fittings, they are less efficient in using water compared to the newer systems. Older toilets also use more water when flushing, compared to newer and more water-efficient systems. This can contribute to higher water consumption, particularly in the buildings with higher human traffic, like shopping malls and offices. What plans does the Ministry have in place to manage the increasing water demand and improve water efficiency?

Third, we need to leverage on technology. It is insufficient to rely on regulations alone to manage water demand. Every individual, household and organisation in Singapore must make an effort to manage their water consumption and reduce usage where possible. Educating the public and businesses on water use can help to identify abnormal water usage and encourage the adoption of water-saving habits.

The Smart Water Meter Programme by PUB presents a good opportunity to leverage on technology to help people to save water. Some of my residents informed me that while they would like to reduce their water usage, they are unable to identify which activities consume the most water from the monthly data in their bill. Some even come to my Meet-the-People sessions to enquire about this and about their water bills. Daily water usage data tracking would be very helpful to help consumers quickly identify and change water wasting habits. Can the PUB provide updates about the new technologies to monitor and improve the efficiency of water use?

Mdm Chairman, Singapore has some 5,700 km of water pipelines, supplying potable water to 1.6 million customers island-wide. Ageing waterpipes, corrosion and changing soil conditions can lead to pipe leakages. When pipes leak, precious water is lost and wasted from the system. There have been cases of large leaks or pipe bursts where a huge volume of water shoots out from the ground. Water supply is thus disrupted in some cases, causing inconvenience to some residents and businesses. As most of the pipelines are underground, small leaks can go unnoticed and may eventually develop to bigger leaks.

What are the steps by PUB to manage these pipelines and whether they are new technologies that can be adopted to better detect and prevent leaks?

Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean.

Mdm Chairman, climate change is the defining crisis of our time. In 2020, the world had to battle record-breaking forest fires, the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record until they ran out of alphabets to name the hurricanes, more frequent floods and droughts and other weather events leading to large-scale devastation.

As a low-lying island, Singapore remains fundamentally vulnerable to the impact of climate change, which poses an existential threat to us. We take a considered, committed and collective approach to the global climate crisis. My colleagues from five Ministries which are taking key measures for climate action in our Green Plan, are collectively responding to the points that Members have raised during this Budget debate and Committee of Supply and presenting the comprehensive action we are taking to put words into action to fight climate change.

I chair the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Climate Change which was established in 2007 to coordinate a whole-of-nation response. While we respond as individual Ministries, we have a collective thought out action plan behind this. This Committee has two important tasks. First, to formulate and execute our national plans to prepare ourselves for the impact of climate change. Second, to ensure that Singapore contributes to global climate action.

Last year, we submitted our enhanced 2030 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) and our Long-Term Low-Emissions Development Strategy (LEDS) under the Paris Agreement – our NDC and our LEDS. We made these commitments, well aware that they are challenging, given our national circumstances.

Mr Louis Ng, Mr Liang Eng Hwa and Ms Poh Li San will be glad to know that the goals which we have set are not meant to be static. We will press ahead with the measures which are within our control, and we will halve our emissions by 2030. But how soon we can achieve net zero, that means eliminate the other half, depends not only on what we do but it depends on what is done internationally in areas such as evolving and maturing key technologies, as well as international collaboration on key areas, such as carbon markets as well as the import and export of green electricity. We will continue to review our climate goals with the aim of achieving net zero emissions as soon as viable.

Allow me, Mdm Chairman, to take a step back to explain the thinking and guiding principles behind how we approach this global crisis.

For a small island city-state like Singapore, climate change poses an asymmetrical challenge. While Singapore contributes around 0.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the totality of global emissions, 100%, including the other 99.9%, affects us too and often, more seriously than it affects larger better endowed countries. So, we must do our best to tackle climate change, but ultimately, we depend on a collective global effort to address the issue at a global level.

Mr Gan Thiam Poh asked about what Singapore is doing to promote this global collaboration. Singapore has been working hard to strengthen consensus and galvanise climate action regionally and globally. This has been especially critical at a time when the multilateral system is under strain from protectionism and unilateral action, further exacerbated by the challenges of COVID-19.

Singapore is often called upon, as a knowledgeable, fair and honest broker, to facilitate discussions to forge consensus for the work under the UNFCCC and its implementation rules. Unfortunately, COP-26 did not take place in Glasgow last year due to COVID-19. But our officials have continued to work actively on important international issues, such as rules for carbon markets and more stringent reporting of national emissions and climate action. We are also actively shaping multilateral discussions on reducing international transportation emissions, as suggested by Ms Mariam Jaafar.

At the same time, we have been carefully planning and implementing, in an integrated and coordinated long-term manner, the measures we need to take domestically for a low carbon future. As a small country with limited alternative energy sources, land and manpower, our trade-offs are much starker than what most countries face. Our carbon emissions set real cross-cutting constraints on our development and the daily lives of Singaporeans. We need to find ways to break out of these constraints through careful long-term planning and innovations in policy and technology. We look for synergies to give ourselves the space to grow, but when it is needed, we also have to make well-considered, real trade-offs.

Miss Rachel Ong, Ms Yeo Wan Ling and Mr Gan Thiam Poh asked about these trade-offs and how we are pursuing decarbonisation despite our constraints. Let me cite a few examples.

First, land use. Singapore is both a city and a country. Within our small land space, we need to accommodate not just housing, parks and commercial centres, but also power plants, reservoirs, air- and sea- ports, and industries. The trade-offs are real, and often the choices are difficult. We cannot wish these away. For example, unlike bigger countries, we do not have large plots of land for extensive solar farms. There are many competing land users, as we have debated in this House over these last few weeks. But we do strive to maximise solar energy by aggressively deploying panels on the rooftops of suitable HDB blocks. My colleague, the Minister for National Development will update us on this later.

Nationwide, we aim to deploy at least two Gigawatt-peak (GWp) of solar power in Singapore by 2030, which supplies energy equivalent to the consumption of about 350,000 households for a year.

We look for synergies. To supplement our limited land, we are also using our reservoirs for floating solar farms, something which several Members asked about. This allows us to use our reservoirs not just for water but also for solar power and to provide green lungs for recreation and water activities as well.

Last year, the new solar farm at Tengeh Reservoir began construction, and this will be among the world’s largest such facilities. It will generate enough solar power to meet the demands of our five local water treatment plants, making Singapore one of the few in the world to have a fully green waterworks system.

Second, securing our water and food supply is a key national priority. We are making significant progress for water. When I hear Members speak about recycling, do not forget that water recycling is recycling too, and we are one of the leaders in the world in water recycling. And when we count water recycling, our recycling rate is really very high. Last year, our desalination plant in Marina East commenced operations – our fourth such plant. We are making a major push for food security as well. Deputy Prime Minister Heng announced the new Agri-Food Cluster Transformation Fund for technology adoption in our agri-food sector.

We actively engage A*STAR and our Institutes of Higher Learning to develop novel, resource efficient approaches for food and water. These will help us break out of our constraints to secure our food, through careful long-term planning and innovations in policy and technology, and keep costs affordable while minimising carbon emissions. In that one long sentence, we can see the dilemmas and the trade-offs that we have to make in each one of the steps that we take.

Third, economy and jobs. Since the time Mr Lee Kuan Yew called for us to create a metropolis out of mudflats, we have always balanced development, conservation and the environment. This is reflected in Singapore being among the best 20 countries in the world today in terms of Emissions Intensity (EI), that is, emissions per GDP dollar. We have been able to grow our economy, create jobs, while keeping our emissions per GDP dollar one of the lowest in the world. And this is in spite of all of our constraints.

I listened very carefully to the speeches made by all the Members, but was particularly struck by the thoughtful analyses made by Ms Mariam Jaafar and Prof Koh Lian Pin. They have deep knowledge of these areas and they understand well the trade-offs as Singapore seeks new ways to grow our economy within a carbon-constrained envelope, and how we can balance conservation, development and jobs. They have made several good suggestions and useful proposals which we will certainly study very closely.

Mdm Chairman, companies will have to adjust their business models. Our workers have to shift to jobs in new areas of growth. One example is the energy and chemicals sector. Mr Abdul Samad, who is with us in this House, will be well aware of this. He and his unions are doing the actual work – they are doing the work helping workers to cope with this challenge and make the transition.

The switch to cleaner energy will reduce demand for more carbon-intensive fossil fuels. However, demand for sustainable fuels and higher value-added petrochemical products and specialty chemicals will grow. The modern green eco-system needs such products, such as in solar panels, batteries, thermal insulation for buildings, durable and light-weight parts for electric vehicles. And we are investing in sustainable energy too. Neste, the world’s largest producer of renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel, is expanding its production capacity here. They are already here, and they are expanding their production. When completed, Singapore will be home to Neste’s largest renewable products plant, creating new jobs.

Many of the major energy and chemical companies in Singapore have also committed to reach net zero by 2050 and Singapore will partner them in this shift.

The public sector will lead by example, by embarking on a comprehensive whole-of-Government programme, called GreenGov.SG, to reduce our resource footprint and carbon emissions, and to enable the rest of the economy to do likewise. The Minister for Sustainability and the Environment will speak more about this later.

At the national level, our comprehensive carbon tax, which covers 80% of Singapore’s carbon emissions, one of the most comprehensive coverages in the world, encapsulates these trade-offs by better aligning the real cost of carbon emissions with the emitter. Mr Sharael Taha asked about our plans for carbon tax and the resulting impact. As Deputy Prime Minister Heng said in his Budget speech, the Government will be reviewing the trajectory and level of the carbon tax, post-2023, in consultation with industry and expert groups. We seek a carbon tax level that will incentivise companies and consumers to switch to carbon friendly products, services and activities, while promoting industry innovation and new green growth.

There are already significant new investments in sustainable industries in Singapore. I just spoke abut Neste. Hyundai is constructing a research and development centre and electric vehicle pilot production facility in Singapore. These examples illustrate how Singapore can leverage and is leveraging our strengths in R&D, advanced manufacturing and logistics to create more opportunities and good jobs for Singaporeans.

In addition, we are taking steps to establish Singapore as a centre for carbon credits trading and services, for sustainability consultancy, and to play a significant role in green finance for sustainable development in a growing Asia. In fact, we are calling on Prof Koh Lian Pin on his expertise to help us develop in this area. This will also create new high quality jobs.

We are similarly taking a proactive approach to protect ourselves from the effects of climate change. This requires forward planning as climate change threats require solutions that span many decades. We have not been sitting on our hands. In fact, we are taking significant steps to protect ourselves from a rise in sea levels of up to one metre, which can be upon us by 2100.

Ten years ago, in 2011, we had raised the minimum level for new land reclamation by an additional metre to take this into account – to bring the minimum reclamation level of new land to two metres above the highest ever recorded tide in Singapore. Taking early action will often cost less in the long run, than trying to raise land levels or put in protection later. Minister for Sustainability and the Environment will be elaborating on our plans.

Being prepared for the future also includes developing new sustainability solutions, not just for ourselves but also for the rest of the world. Our $25 billion five-year Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2025 Plan includes a significant portion for Urban Solutions and Sustainability (USS).

R&D plans in our USS domain include enhancing our resilience in energy, water and food, and developing more cost-effective solutions to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. We will also increase our R&D efforts in the use of renewables and emerging low-carbon technologies such as hydrogen and carbon capture, utilisation and storage, a subject which Miss Cheryl Chan is very knowledgeable about and spoke very lucidly on.

We will also develop solutions against rising sea levels, urban heat island effects, and other challenges brought about by climate change. As a “living lab”, we will continue to serve as a test-bed for innovative solutions that can be exported globally in cities around the world.

Mdm Chairman, I have outlined the principles which have guided our considered, committed and collective strategy on climate change – first, supporting and galvanising global action; second, finding synergies and addressing our trade-offs with creative solutions; third, turning constraints and challenges into new opportunities; and fourth, planning many decades ahead to prepare for the future and taking action now, and not waiting for the future to be upon us.

But most important of all, we need to overcome this existential challenge together, as a whole-of-nation. Ms Hany Soh asked how the Government intends to achieve this whole-of-nation effort.

Mdm Chairman, I am heartened that on 1 February this year, this House unanimously passed a Motion moved by Mr Louis Ng and his fellow Government Parliamentary Committees (GPC) Members, that acknowledged the seriousness of the global threat of climate change and called for action. This augurs well.

Last month, five Ministries collectively announced our Singapore Green Plan 2030. The Green Plan reflects this Government’s aspirations and commitment towards sustainable development for us. Many Singaporeans, especially young Singaporeans, are motivated and energised by this vision and want to play an active role. And our desire is to partner every Singaporean to transform Singapore into a glowing global city of sustainability. My colleagues from the respective Ministries will be elaborating on the initiatives under the Green Plan and responding to the specific comments from Members.

Our enhanced NDC, LEDS, and Green Plan have set challenging and ambitious goals for Singapore. I am confident that by rallying together as one, we will rise to the challenge, re-invent Singapore and create a brighter and sustainable future for all Singaporeans. [Applause.]

Minister Grace Fu.

Mdm Chairman, with your permission, I would like to ask for a few requests. First, 4 March being the World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development, I think it is an appropriate time for this House to recognise the many hard-working engineers that are contributing impactfully, positively to the sustainable development in Singapore. So, with your permission, may I put on record our recognition for all the engineers out there. [Applause.]

Yes, Minister.

Second, with your permission, Mdm Chairman, we will like clarifications on the various speeches given by Senior Minister, myself and the fellow Ministers coming after me on the Singapore Green Plan 2030, to be taken after Minister Chan Chun Sing's speech.

Yes, Minister.

With your permission, Mdm Chairman, may I ask the Clerks to distribute the factsheets and infographics?

Please proceed.

Thank you. Mdm Chairman, Senior Minister Teo has set out the principles that guide Singapore’s response to climate change, taking into account our challenges, and the opportunities before us.

Climate change is one of the gravest threats facing mankind and Singapore. What is at stake is the survival and future of our small island state. One or two more degrees Celsius increase may not sound like much but if sea level rises a few metres, our sunny island could literally be in the sea. Climate change could also threaten our food and water supply. We have to take climate change seriously, study its impact and start preparing ourselves now. We have to develop a long-term climate action plan to both mitigate and adapt to climate change. This plan will span several generations to protect Singapore and our children.

This was why the Prime Minister spoke at length about climate change during his 2019 National Day Rally, and I quote: “Both the SAF and climate change defences are existential for Singapore. These are life and death matters. Everything else must bend at the knee to safeguard the existence of our island nation.” We must take climate change seriously. The Government is fully committed to take decisive action to mitigate climate change and adapt to its impact.

Last month, following a six-hour debate on the Motion tabled by six PAP Members after extensive engagements by the Young PAP, this House passed a motion to acknowledge climate change as a global emergency and a threat to mankind. I was most encouraged by the passion and concerns shown.

But our efforts alone will not turn the tide. Climate action requires urgent, collective and coordinated efforts by all countries, big and small. We have been working actively within ASEAN and the broader international community to deliver a global response to climate change and contribute to the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Madam, the course of human history has been shaped by innovation and discovery and we are on the cusp of yet another revolution today – a global sustainability revolution. Just as the invention of the steam engine and discovery of fossil fuels propelled us into the industrial age, the energy transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy will redefine how we power the global economy. This revolution will be driven by policy makers, consumers, inventors and investors who recognise the opportunities that will arise from a circular, low carbon economy. We must catch and ride this new global wave of sustainability.

Many MNCs are putting Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations at the core of their business and investment decisions. I am happy that companies like Temasek are strongly committed to sustainability, embedding it in both their operations and investment approach. Singapore is well-positioned. We are not starting from scratch.

Since Independence, instead of pursuing growth at all costs, we have insisted on quality, inclusive and sustainable growth. Each generation of Singaporeans must see ourselves as stewards of our nation. We must pass on a better Singapore to the generations of Singaporeans that will come after us, just as the previous generations had done for us. We must build on our past achievements, strive to overcome our present limitations and pioneer new solutions for a more sustainable future.

Getting to that future will be a whole-of-nation effort, requiring every Government agency, individual, business, research institution, community group and civil society organisation to work in unison.

Sustainability is not an isolated programme or initiative but about engineering a whole system and cultivating a new way of life. Each challenge and its associated solution will impact on another. This requires hard trade-offs to be made and close coordination in execution.

This is the purpose of the Singapore Green Plan 2030. It is a commitment of this PAP Government to our present and future generations, to chart a common vision for a sustainable future and a roadmap for everyone.

Through the Green Plan, sustainability will shape our economy, our infrastructure, our way of life. It will fundamentally change how we live, work and play. The Government will set the broad policy direction and the public sector will lead the change. Through the GreenGov.SG initiative, it will exemplify sustainability in its actions and lead market demand for sustainable products and services.

More importantly, we want the Green Plan to spark a national conversation and energise Singaporeans to take action. Every Singaporean must be involved in this transformation because, first, sustainability is not costless. Just as we pay for our security and social services, we will have to pay a bit more for greener goods and services, adjust to less convenience in our daily lives, or reskill for green jobs in new industries. We cannot incur these costs without a national consensus.

Second, while climate change may feel abstract for individuals, it is our individual actions that determine the collective outcome. For example, if every household in Singapore raises the aircon temperature by one degree, we will cut carbon emissions by 23 kilo-tonnes, equivalent to the annual carbon emissions from 7,000 cars. Our consumption patterns drive industry. If we avoid disposables, buy locally produced food and prefer energy-efficient appliances, greener and more sustainable business models will emerge.

Third, we are excited about the new business opportunities that the sustainability sector can bring that will benefit Singaporeans and Singapore.

The Green Plan will also contribute to the international sustainability agenda and global climate goals. The Green Plan will lay out our priorities for collaboration with our international stakeholders. It is in our interest, and that of the world, to catalyse the development of green solutions, such as green hydrogen, and carbon capture, utilisation and storage.

We are well placed to contribute to the global effort. As a living lab, where new solutions can be test-bedded and exported to the region and beyond. And as a financial hub and talent hub, where green capital can find common objectives with skilled entrepreneurs and workers. This will allow us to pace our green transition correctly and stay in sync with the global trajectory so that we do not move too hastily and hurt our economic competitiveness and the livelihoods of Singaporeans, or move too slowly and get left behind.

Some have asked if the Green Plan is just a compilation of existing initiatives. Madam, it is not. The Green Plan is a long-term and living plan that will evolve as we go along. We will update our targets and strategies as new technologies and practicable solutions avail themselves.

The Green Plan is also not just an MSE or even a Government plan, but a blueprint that we have set out for ourselves as a nation and therefore, we have six other Ministers speaking on it.

Everyone must work together to achieve our vision. While some targets are existing, new and enhanced targets have been included. Even in areas where targets remain the same, we are putting in place comprehensive and concrete near-to-medium term plans to achieve our targets.

The Green Plan positions us to achieve our goal of net zero emissions as soon as viable. Beyond the specific mitigation strategies, it envisions a new future where sustainability is embedded in our DNA.

Madam, our targets and strategies are both ambitious and credible. Climate change is a global emergency. Our efforts alone will not turn the tide. Singapore contributes only around 0.1% of global emissions. But if we can succeed in our plans, we will show the world how a small country with severe constraints is nevertheless able to take bold action and pave the way for other countries to adopt new solutions.

Let me now give an overview of the Green Plan. There are five pillars: City in Nature, sustainable living, energy reset, green economy and resilient future. They represent the priority areas in Singapore's sustainable development over the next decade.

The first pillar on City in Nature seeks to create a green, liveable and sustainable home for Singaporeans. Minister Desmond Lee will talk about our efforts to infuse nature into our urban fabric.

Sustainable living is our second pillar. Conserving resources must become our way of life – consume less, recycle more and take public transport. Minister Lawrence Wong will share how we will nurture future generations to be more environmentally conscious. Minister Ong Ye Kung will speak about greening our commutes at MOT's Committee of Supply. I will elaborate on our transition towards a zero-waste nation.

To lower our carbon footprint, we will need to employ cleaner energy, and use it more efficiently and this is our third pillar, energy reset. Minister Tan See Leng will speak on plans to make our energy and power systems cleaner and more efficient. Minister Desmond Lee will share how we will make our built environment and urban spaces more sustainable and Minister Ong Ye Kung will make the case for electric vehicles.

Sustainability can be a new engine of jobs and growth as we pivot towards a green economy, the fourth pillar. Minister Chan Chun Sing will share how we will help our enterprises seize new opportunities in sustainability and prepare Singaporeans to take on green jobs. With our position as the regional financial and services hub, carbon services and green financing will be new areas of growth.

Finally, we must adapt to climate change to ensure Singapore's long-term survival. This is what the fifth pillar of the Green Plan is about – building a resilient future.

Let me speak on three aspects of the resilient future pillar. Additional details will be shared in my second speech later.

First, coastal defence, which Ms Poh Li San asked about. PUB, as the lead coastal protection agency, will work with other agencies to conduct site-specific studies and develop coastal adaptation pathways and protection measures that are adaptive to climate uncertainties. We target to complete the formulation of adaptation pathways at coastlines along City-East Coast, Lim Chu Kang, Sungei Kadut and around Jurong Island by 2030.

Second, keeping Singapore cool in a warming world. According to the Meteorological Service Singapore, it is almost one degree Celsius hotter today than in the 1950s. Apart from global warming, it is also driven by the Urban Heat Island effect, or UHI for short – a phenomenon where an urbanised area is warmer than its surroundings because of the built environment and increased human activities. The UHI effect is a complex topic that requires in-depth studies.

We will chart a science-based roadmap to holistically and decisively moderate temperature rise in Singapore.

Third, strengthening Singapore's food security by growing local in a resource-efficient way. With climate change bringing about widespread extreme weather events and soaring global demand for food, the global food market will be more volatile and unpredictable. And this is a critical risk for Singapore as we import over 90% of our food supply.

In 2019, we announced our "30 by 30" goal to produce 30% of our nutritional needs locally by 2030. We will do so with a keen eye on energy, water and land efficiency. This complements our other strategies of diversifying import sources and growing food overseas to strengthen food security.

To support the agri-food sector, we will make available space and infrastructure, ramp up funding support to build R&D capability and provide incentives for conventional farms to adopt technology to transform into highly productive, climate-resilient and resource-efficient farms.

While the five pillars of the Green Plan will map the way forward, the public, private and people sectors must come together for us to succeed, as Ms Hany Soh highlighted.

The Public Service will lead on sustainability as part of the GreenGov.SG initiative which Deputy Prime Minister announced in his Budget speech. We will have four shifts.

First, we will set more ambitious goals for the Public Service, including a carbon target for the first time. We aim to peak the public sector's emissions around 2025, ahead of the national target of around 2030.

Second, we will expand the scope of GreenGov.SG beyond Government offices, to include other public sector infrastructure and operations. GreenGov.SG will encompass a far wider array of assets to include waste-to-energy plants, public transport infrastructure, hawker centres and healthcare facilities. With this expanded scope, the public sector will take on a greater responsibility to enhance the sustainability of our operations.

Third, we will embed sustainability practices in the public sector's core business areas and influence our service providers and suppliers to be more sustainable. One key tool is in green procurement. As a major consumer of goods and services, the public sector can and will influence the industry towards sustainable business choices and practices by incorporating more sustainability requirements in our procurement framework.

Fourth, we will build an organisational culture of sustainability and grow the movement amongst Public Service officers. More details on GreenGov.SG will be released over the course of the year.

Besides the public sector, the private sector plays a critical role in the Green Plan, as Ms Janet Ang so eloquently argued for.

We will support companies in their sustainability journey through the green economy pillar. They can both do well and do good, particularly as consumers and investors increasingly prioritise sustainability.

This includes working with our researchers and companies to develop new solutions that push the frontiers on sustainability, such as through the Research Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) 2025 plan.

As part of Singapore Together and to involve every Singaporean in the movement, as Ms Hany Soh, Miss Cheryl Chan have highlighted, the Government will launch a series of Green Plan Conversations. This is part of our efforts to partner, encourage, and support ground-up efforts and catalyse new partnerships. Projects in line with the Green Plan, and Alliances for Action will be launched in the coming months.

Through the $50 million SG Eco Fund, we will also support ground-up projects that involve the community and advance environmental sustainability. Ms Hany Soh asked about the current progress of the fund. The first grant call saw overwhelming interest with over 200 applications received, in areas like waste management and urban farming. We are evaluating the proposals and I look forward to sharing about them in the coming months. Madam, in Malay please.

(In Malay): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Climate change poses grave threats for Singapore. Last year was one of the hottest ever, with frequent and heavy rainfall events. We need to make deep transformations in all aspects of our lives and work together to tackle climate change.

To chart our pathway to a sustainable future, the Government has launched the Singapore Green Plan 2030, for a whole-of-nation action.

Everyone, regardless of age, race, and background can and must play a part.

As individuals, we can change our daily habits, by consuming and wasting less resources, recycling more, taking public transport where we can, or turning our air-conditioner up by one degree higher.

As businesses, we can use less packaging materials, adopt energy and water efficient manufacturing processes, and recycle our waste better, into useful resources.

The public sector will drive a nation-wide push towards sustainability using the tools and levers at our disposal, such as green procurement.

Our children' future depends on what we do today, to preserve our resources and protect the earth.

Let us work together to make Singapore a City of Green Possibilities.

(In English): In Mandarin, please.

(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Climate change poses grave threats for Singapore. Last year was one of the hottest we have experienced, with frequent and heavy rainfall events. Climate changes has also brought about more severe natural disasters more frequently. We need to make deep transformations in all aspects of our lives and work together to tackle climate change.

To chart our pathway to a sustainable future, the Government has launched the Singapore Green Plan 2030, for whole-of-nation action

Everyone, regardless of age, race, and background can and must play a part.

As individuals, we can change our daily habits, by consuming and wasting less resources, recycling more, taking public transport where we can, or turning our air-conditioner up by one degree higher.

As businesses, we can use less packaging materials, adopt energy and water efficient manufacturing processes, and recycle our waste better.

The public sector will drive a nation-wide push towards sustainability using the tools and levers at our disposal, such as green procurement.

In the spirit of Singapore Together, through conversations and other channels, we will engage Singaporeans and businesses to harness more ideas and put them into action to enrich the Green Plan.

We will also update our strategies and targets as new technological solutions emerge.

Our children's future depends on what we do today, to preserve our natural resources and protect the earth.

Let us work together to make Singapore a City of Green Possibilities.

(In English): Let me conclude. A few months ago, I was struck by a question from my son. He is in his early 20s. He asked if I would still have had children, given how our planet is struggling to support a growing population, with the daunting challenges that climate change will pose. For him and his generation, the question is not hypothetical. My reply to him was absolutely, yes! Because I believe that humanity has the wisdom and ingenuity, and the collective will to find solutions to combat global warming.

The Green Plan is a solemn pledge to future generations of Singaporeans that there will always be a Singapore, come 30, 50 or even 100 years from now: a shining jewel in the oceans, if we work together. We will face many grave threats, but we will transform challenges into opportunities. This is the Singapore DNA.

We will take bold and collective action to create a sustainable and liveable home. This is a pledge that Singaporeans today must keep to give our children the confidence to pursue their dreams, raise their families with hope and optimism, and look forward to a brighter, better future.

Madam, climate change must not be exacerbated on our watch. Let us make the right choice today, so that our children and grandchildren can look back and be proud of the direction we have set. Together, let us work to make Singapore a City of Green Possibilities. [Applause.]

Senior Minister Teo, you have some clarifications?

Thank you, Mdm Chairman. I would just like to take the opportunity to correct two dates which I mentioned in my speech.

First of all, we are halving our emissions by 2050. I may have misspoken and said "2030".

And when I referred to sea-level rise of one metre, it should be 2100, not "2010". I think the future is going to be upon us faster than we think. Thank you very much, Mdm Chair.

Minister Desmond Lee.

Mdm Chairman, Senior Minister Teo has just laid out the nature of the climate challenge facing Singapore, while Minister Grace Fu has set out the impetus for the Green Plan and outlined its five key pillars. I will now describe our plans to make our urban environment more green and sustainable under the City in Nature and Energy Reset pillars of the Green Plan.

As an island city vulnerable to climate change, the development of climate-resilient buildings is crucial to our survival. Beyond climate adaptation, we must also reduce carbon emissions from our urban environment. And we must continue greening Singapore. Given our tight land constraints, we must find innovative ways to weave nature into our urban fabric more intensively. And even as we face developmental pressures, we must strive to protect our most ecologically important areas.

Members have also asked about our plans to achieve these goals. We will make a big push on three fronts. First, transforming Singapore into a City in Nature; second, making our buildings, HDB towns and districts even more sustainable; and finally, driving research and development in urban sustainability.

Let me first start with our City in Nature push. Last year, we set out our goal to transform Singapore into a City in Nature. Ms Nadia Samdin asked for an update on our efforts. I will give a fuller update at the MND COS debate later today, but I will set out our plans for the future now.

First, we are greening our urban areas more intensively. Under URA’s Master Plan 2019, we will be adding another 1,000 hectares of green spaces over the next 10 to 15 years. As part of these efforts, we will add over 130 hectares of new parks over the next six years. At the same time, we will also enhance about 170 hectares of existing parks. These parks will feature more lush vegetation and natural landscapes. Altogether, Singaporeans can look forward to over 300 hectares of such parks by end-2026 – almost four times the size of the Singapore Botanic Gardens.

As part of our plans, we are also expanding our nature park network, by setting aside 50% more land for nature parks. This will provide 200 hectares of new nature parks by 2030. Singaporeans can immerse themselves in the nature parks’ lush forests and enjoy nature-based recreational activities. Our new nature parks also act as buffers to protect our nature reserves against urbanisation, and provide more habitats for native flora and fauna to thrive.

Ms Nadia Samdin and Prof Koh Lian Pin also asked about how we can continue to improve connectivity between our natural spaces. This is important. It is a key strategy of our City in Nature vision. Not just to conserve specific pockets of greenery and nature, but to look at Singapore and our map from an ecological connectivity point of view. Habitats that are ecologically connected increase the chances of survival for flora and fauna in our city. That is why we have been strengthening Singapore’s ecological connectivity. We are doing so by studying faunal movement patterns and flora dispersal mechanisms and pathways both on land and in the water. This understanding of the connections between our natural spaces has, in turn, enabled us to conserve key habitats that are important for ecological connectivity.

For example, we recognised that the forests at the future Bukit Batok Hillside Nature Park and Bukit Batok Central Nature Park are important stepping stones between the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and the future Tengah Forest Corridor. That is why we dedicated these nature parks as part of the Bukit Batok Nature Corridor. They will be kept lushly forested, so that they can strengthen not just the area’s green network, but also ecological connectivity between the Nature Reserve and Tengah. We also designated Sisters’ Island as a Marine Park, because modelling studies indicate that it is a key source of coral larvae, which are widely dispersed and enrich other areas in the Southern Islands.

And we will do more. For example, as I shared with the House last week, we are developing a more comprehensive picture of our islandwide eco-system and connectivity of green and blue spaces, so that we can better consider how specific sites connect to our nature cores, buffers, and corridors. And we are creating ecological corridors on the ground by doing physical planting, to better connect our green spaces. For example, we are planting native trees and shrubs more intensively to re-create forest-like structures along our roads known as Nature Ways, to augment our network of ecological corridors between key habitats.

At the same time, we are expanding our Park Connector Network, so that we will have 500 km of Park Connectors by 2030. I am glad to share that we will develop new recreational routes across our island, in the next phase of expansion of our Park Connector Network. We will provide more details on these new routes at MND’s COS debate later today.

Together, these moves will not only strengthen ecological connectivity, but also provide Singaporeans with greater access to green spaces close to home. By 2030, every household will be within a 10-metre walk from a park.

Our urban areas will also be naturalised and greened even further. By incorporating natural designs and plantings into our parks and streetscapes, they can serve as nature-based solutions to help provide shade, cool the environment, improve air quality, enhance flood resilience and beautify our city. These are just some of the benefits and outcomes that we hope to see from our City in Nature efforts, which Prof Koh Lian Pin had asked about yesterday.

One example of this can be seen at Jurong Lake Gardens, our third national garden. We converted a concrete canal into a series of meandering streams with vegetated wetlands that play host to charismatic wildlife, such as otters and herons. Such naturalised waterways can help slow down water runoff from surrounding areas, reducing the risk of flash floods. We will naturalise more waterways and waterbodies in parks and gardens in this manner as part of our City in Nature efforts.

We are conserving our rich biodiversity too, through habitat restoration and species recovery programmes. For example, as part of our Marine Conservation Action Plan, we placed purpose-built intertidal pools along a barren stretch of seawall, to provide a habitat during low tide for coastal and marine biodiversity to thrive.

We are also working with the community to improve how we co-exist with nature and wildlife, by taking a science-based approach towards wildlife management and harnessing both ecological and social tools to minimise human-wildlife conflict.

The active support of the community is crucial to making our City in Nature vision a reality. That is why we are working with the community across many areas, from continuing to support community gardening, to the OneMillionTrees movement. Through this movement, we are doubling our annual tree planting rate and planting one million additional trees across Singapore between 2020 and 2030, to underpin our City in Nature efforts.

Madam, some Members of this House have asked why there is a need for the OneMillionTrees movement, when we could instead forgo clearance of vegetated land and conserve all existing greenery.

We appreciate that many Singaporeans have a strong sense of affinity for our existing green spaces. That is a good sign of the maturity of a City in Nature.

However, the OneMillionTrees movement is not merely a quantitative effort to increase our island's tree numbers or to engage in ornamental planting. Instead, it underpins our qualitative transformation into a City in Nature – not just nature, but a city as well.

Indeed, even if we were to hypothetically forgo some of our people's needs and halt all new development on vegetated land, we would still need to plant more trees at an accelerated rate in light of our climate challenges.

The trees we are planting offer us many benefits. I mentioned some of them just now – mitigating urban heat to increase our climate resilience, providing more habitats for local biodiversity in our existing green spaces and strengthening our eco-systems' resilience by creating ecological corridors.

Indeed, even in the heart of our core forests, we are doing tree planting and forest restoration, as part of our OneMillionTrees movement.

At the same time, we are also proactively removing invasive species, like Albizia trees, Dioscorea and oil palms, to allow our native rainforests to regenerate.

This is because we need to actively manage our forests to make them stronger. By doing so, we are assisting our early secondary forests to transition into more mature and diverse rainforests over time and improving habitats for native biodiversity. These efforts strengthen the resilience of our forest landscapes to climate change.

This is painstaking, long-term work and we are deeply appreciative of our community of volunteers who have rolled up their sleeves and have been working alongside us to make our native eco-systems healthier and more resilient.

But even as we continue greening Singapore, we must also continue to meet our people's needs. This balancing act between conservation and development will become even more challenging given our tight land constraints.

Prof Koh Lian Pin also spoke about our Environmental Impact Assessment or EIA framework and public consultation on preserving green spaces.

As I shared last week, we are reviewing whether it would be better to centralise the management of EIA consultants, instead of having individual developers manage their own. I thank Prof Koh for his views on how the EIA framework as a whole can be improved and strengthened. We will take them into consideration as we continue our study.

And as I mentioned earlier, NParks will continue to study and model our biodiversity's movement patterns, to inform our understanding of ecological connectivity across Singapore and how to strengthen it. So, studying ecological connectivity, in a city and urban environment, to infuse City in Nature all through our urban landscape.

Given Singapore's land constraints, we will not be able to keep every vacant land undeveloped. As a city-state, we must cater for everything that a country needs within just our city limits. We need space to continue meeting our people's needs, ranging from industry and food production, to more public housing for Singapore families.

However, we adopt a range of strategies to make good use of existing land, as good stewards ought and in so doing, enable us to retain more green spaces of significant biodiversity.

We are also committed to engaging stakeholders, including members of the public and the nature community, further upstream in our planning process and will work with them at suitable platforms to identify these areas of interest. My colleague Minister Indranee Rajah will share more about our plans to discuss these issues with Singaporeans as part of our national conversations on long-term land use planning, at MND's COS debate.

Madam, I now move from City in Nature, to Energy Reset. Buildings account for over 20% of our emissions, so we need to push hard to make our city more sustainable. To achieve this, we will use cleaner energy and increase our energy efficiency.

Miss Cheryl Chan asked for an update on the Singapore Green Building Masterplan. Over the past year, BCA and the Singapore Green Building Council have worked together to develop the next edition of the Singapore Green Building Masterplan together with industry stakeholders and the community. The Masterplan captures our collective commitment to pursue more ambitious sustainability standards in our city.

We have set ourselves three targets – I call them "80-80-80 in 2030".

First, we will green 80% of our buildings by Gross Floor Area by 2030. This is an existing target, to ensure that the majority of buildings that we use in our everyday lives will be sustainable and energy efficient.

To date, we have made good progress by greening over 43% of our buildings, but we have more to do.

Beyond that, we must push more owners of buildings to pursue best-in-class standards and become Super Low Energy buildings, or SLE buildings.

SLE buildings, which achieve at least 60% improvement in energy efficiency compared to 2005 levels, represent the next wave of our green building movement. They are key to our transition to a more sustainable, low carbon Built Environment.

Hence, our second target is for 80% of new buildings to be SLE buildings from 2030. The Government will take the lead in SLE buildings. In so doing, we will build industry capability to develop SLE buildings and provide more use cases for the private sector to take reference from.

Our third target is for our best-in-class green buildings to see an 80% improvement in energy efficiency compared to 2005 levels by 2030, pushing the boundary further. We will ramp up research and innovation efforts to push the boundaries of energy efficiency and accelerate deployment of cost-effective green technologies.

Since 2014, our Green Buildings Innovation Cluster (GBIC) programme has supported the research, prototyping and demonstration of green building technologies and helped to bring these solutions to market. We are seeing how we can further enhance funding support for GBIC to help us achieve this ambitious third target.

Sustainability has always been integral to our transformation plans for the Built Environment and we should build on the green movement to drive transformation across the entire value chain and create more opportunities for our firms and our local workforce. Minister of State Tan Kiat How and I will elaborate on how we plan to do so at MND's COS debate later.

Beyond individual buildings, we also want our towns and our districts to be more sustainable.

Our new HDB towns will be greener and more sustainable. For example, Tengah will have centralised cooling systems, electric vehicle charging points and extensive deployment of solar panels.

HDB is also incorporating technology into the design of towns to improve ventilation and reduce heat gain.

Within their homes, residents will be able to use technology and apps to monitor and optimise the use of their home appliances and equipment, enabling them to conserve electricity, save money and participate in our sustainability efforts too.

Members also asked about our plans to make existing towns more sustainable. MND and MSE are working together to turn every town into an Eco Town, by encouraging residents to live more sustainably. To achieve this, we will make use of infrastructure solutions under the HDB Green Towns Programme to help our existing towns reduce their energy consumption by 15% by 2030, from the levels in 2020.

We will achieve this through both technology and design. For example, we are using smart LED lights to reduce energy use, doubling total solar capacity on HDB rooftops and converting the top decks of suitable multi-storey carparks into urban farms, community gardens and green landscapes.

Since we announced the Green Towns Programme last year, we have made good progress. So far, HDB has called or awarded tenders to implement solar panels on more than 5,700 HDB blocks. Installation of these solar panels is in progress and will be completed in the next two to three years, achieving more than 50% of our 2030 solar capacity target of 540 megawatt-peak.

HDB and SFA have also awarded tenders for urban farming at nine multi-storey carparks and will be working closely to do more.

In addition, residents or organisations with interesting ideas to promote sustainability can tap on MSE's Eco Fund for their initiatives. And if these prove workable, MND and MSE will work together to see if these can be scaled to more HDB estates under the Green Towns Programme.

We will share more about our efforts to enhance liveability and strengthen predictive maintenance in housing estates at MND's COS.

We are also developing eco-friendly districts as demonstration projects to show how it can be done. For example, Jurong Lake District will be developed as a model sustainable mixed-use district. Future developments in the District will seek to meet higher sustainability targets that are above our national goals, where possible.

We envision the District to be a model for how innovative solutions and technology can enable a more liveable, sustainable and healthier urban environment. It can also serve as a testing ground for such innovative urban solutions.

Indeed, innovation enables us to keep moving forward on the journey of sustainable development. That is why R&D is part of our long-term strategy for urban sustainability.

Since its launch in 2017, our Cities of Tomorrow (CoT) research and development programme has supported R&D that helps to address urban sustainability challenges. For example, HDB and NUS are exploring urban designs that harness solar heat to create temperature differences that enhance air movement through a building. This can help create natural drafts to cool the environment, thereby minimising residents' air-conditioning needs. We will build on the good progress of CoT and extend it for another five years.

Miss Cheryl Chan and Ms Nadia Samdin asked how we will support R&D into nature-based solutions. Under Cities of Tomorrow, R&D that supports our efforts to become a City in Nature will be a key research area that we will significantly invest in. For example, we will support research and development of technology that seeks to enhance biodiversity, explore nature-based solutions for climate adaptation, and more.

Madam, transforming Singapore into a City in Nature, making our buildings, towns and districts more sustainable through an Energy Reset, and driving sustainability-related R&D all have one thing in common: they require all hands on deck.

Transforming our urban environment to be greener and more sustainable will always be an on-going task, which requires the Government, the private sector, academia and our communities to come together – each playing our part but working together.

Sustainability is a marathon which we cannot run alone. We must be in it for the long haul – to be responsible stewards not just for our children, but for their children after them. In that spirit, let us come together: to push ahead in the next bound of our sustainability journey, to make the Green Plan a reality, and to build a Singapore that we can be even prouder of.

Mr Lawrence Wong.

Mdm Chairman, my colleagues before me have shared about the SG Green Plan that will take us a major step forward in building a more sustainable Singapore. Beyond specific policies, we want to instill a broader mindset change and new environmentally conscious habits. These will take time to take root in our society. We must start young and inculcate these mindsets in our students through education. Several Members have highlighted this in their speeches, including Mr Abdul Samad, Miss Cheng Li Hui, Ms Nadia Samdin, Dr Shahira Abdullah and Mr Xie Yao Quan. I thank them for their speeches and suggestions.

Environmental education is not new in our schools. It is part of the curriculum and many schools have programmes to help our students learn to be more environmentally conscious. We will build on our foundation and take it further.

In particular, we will strengthen and deepen the current strands of environmental education in schools and weave these together to create an Eco Stewardship Programme in all our schools, from Primary to Pre-university. The term "stewardship" represents our individual and collective responsibility to take good care of the environment – not just in the short term, but always with an eye for the future and for future generations.

Doing so requires responsible and informed decision-making, and choosing to do what is good and right through our daily habits. It also entails an innovative spirit and a mindset of growth, where we can pioneer new ways of doing things in caring for the environment.

Through this Eco Stewardship Programme, we aim to inculcate informed and responsible sustainability habits in our students for life. We aim to empower them to make a positive difference in their schools, in their homes and in the community. Under this Programme, environmental sustainability will be holistically integrated into the school environment and we will do this through four approaches which we call the 4Cs.

The first C is the Curriculum. Environment and climate change education is already integrated into subjects like Science, Geography and Social Studies. As Ms Nadia Ahmad Samdin and Miss Cheng Li Hui highlighted, we can do more to enhance the teaching and learning of sustainability in both the Sciences, and the Humanities. For example, in the new upper Secondary Geography syllabus, the topics will be organised around the theme of sustainability where students will understand the impact of sustainability issues. We will also refresh and strengthen the Singapore perspective on sustainable development.

To make the learning come alive, we will develop more learning resources which feature sustainability initiatives within our school environment. These learning resources will help students connect their learning to their actual lived experience in schools, and make the learning more authentic and engaging.

The second C is Campus. We will progressively enhance the infrastructure of our schools with a range of green features. We now have about 130 schools on the SolarNova programme with solar panels being progressively installed on their rooftops. We will extend this to cover most of our remaining schools in the coming decade.

We will improve energy efficiency of all our school campuses. We will embark on a programme to gradually have LED lights as the main light source in our classrooms, and more energy-efficient Direct-Current fans.

Some schools have already actively harnessed sustainability features within their campuses to enrich students learning. For example, I visited Commonwealth Secondary School recently. They have several eco-habitats, including the Rainforest, the Stream and the Wetland. These outdoor classrooms provide students with real eco-systems that they can study and observe. Students also plant their own vegetables in the school’s nursery, which are harvested for the canteen’s use. Through this immersive environment, students develop a better appreciation for nature and biodiversity.

MOE will, therefore, continue to green our schools and testbed new innovations, so that our school buildings can be more sustainable and our school campuses can become learning laboratories for our students to see sustainability in practice.

Beyond academic learning and infrastructure, we also need to instill the right habits in our students. This includes encouraging them to reduce waste, to recycle right and to reduce energy use as a matter of habit.

The third C is, therefore, about Culture and through the Eco-Stewardship Programme, we aim to strengthen the eco-culture in schools towards sustainability. We will build on existing efforts to instill daily habits of environmental consciousness. We will expand our everyday responsibilities to include sustainability habits. It could be simple activities like switching off lights and fans upon leaving the classrooms and, in fact, some schools have also encouraged students to reduce and recycle food waste.

For example, Elias Park Primary School has a food waste management programme, where students are taught and encouraged to order only what they can finish and use the bio-digesters in the canteen for food waste recycling. We will expand such good practices to more schools and pilot ways for students to see that their daily habits can make a discernible impact on the environment.

We will also help students champion sustainability mindset and practices through leadership opportunities so that they can encourage their peers and friends towards more sustainable living.

Building a culture of sustainability requires schools, families and the community to complement one another’s efforts. The learning from schools will reinforce our community efforts, and in turn, will encourage and cultivate more good habits to create a ripple effect on society.

The Eco Stewardship Programme will also encompass the Community and that is our fourth C. Schools are part of a larger community eco-system. We will work closely with partners, across different Government agencies and also with the private and people sectors. We will widen and enhance the platforms for students to participate in meaningful community projects to care for the environment and to promote sustainable living.

MOE will also work with partners to strengthen students’ awareness of future “green jobs”. Dr Shahira Abdullah suggested a greater push for youths to consider a career in the environmental and sustainability sector. And I agree that this is, indeed, a growing sector where we can raise awareness and appreciation amongst young people of the opportunities in this space. So, we are equipping our teachers and school Education and Career Guidance counsellors to build students’ awareness of these future opportunities and to help them discover and explore their interests.

These opportunities to explore and prepare our students for more careers in the environmental and sustainability sector will continue beyond schools to our Institutes of Higher Learning, or IHLs. Our IHLs will connect students with relevant industry partners through career fairs and the support of Education and Career Guidance counsellors. They will also work with industry partners to curate internships to expose students to jobs in these sectors.

Beyond a greater push for our youths to consider a career in these sectors, the IHLs are also enhancing green infrastructure and promoting sustainable living initiatives within their own campuses. For example, The National University of Singapore has developed a Climate Action Plan 030 to cool its campus by four-degree Celsius and to build a carbon neutral campus. Other Universities, too, are embarking on their own sustainability journeys.

To further complement these education efforts at the school and IHL level, we will also leverage on the new Science Centre at Jurong Lake District. The Science Centre will champion public education on sustainability. It will serve as a showcase for innovative technologies through programmes and exhibits to engage youths and the public. With all these, we hope it will also inspire sustainable lifestyle changes among Singaporeans and in our society.

So, Mdm Chair, through the Eco Stewardship Programme, we aim to reduce carbon emissions from our schools significantly. We aim to achieve a two-thirds reduction of net carbon emissions from the schools sector by 2030.

We will work towards at least 20% of our schools to be carbon-neutral by 2030, with the rest to follow thereafter.

We will start by piloting sustainability features and related concepts in some schools. We have identified as a start four schools to be on-board and they are Elias Park Primary School, Mee Toh School, Commonwealth Secondary School and Tampines Secondary School. These schools have already adopted a holistic school-wide approach to sustainability. So, we will work with them to further reduce net carbon emissions from the school buildings and to encourage students to actively reduce their individual carbon footprint. We will learn from their experiences in the pilot, and progressively scale up good and practical solutions across all our schools.

Mdm Chair, we have set ambitious plans for ourselves. They are not just hard targets in reducing carbon emissions. But, equally, if not more importantly, they are about nurturing our young with the values, skills and know-how to become responsible stewards of the environment.

We hope to see in every student an eco steward for life – where they will have a sensible sensitivity towards the environment, and understand what it means to live sustainably.

Through our concerted efforts, we can seed and grow a sustainability movement where we can create a greener future for our children to harvest, then they can look forward with confidence to a better and brighter future for their own children, and for many more generations to come in Singapore.

Minister Desmond Lee.

Madam, I wanted to make a correction on what I said earlier. I said earlier that by 2030 every household would be within 10 metres' walk from a park. I suddenly realise that we do not have enough land for that.

That would be nice, though!

Our target is every household will be within a 10-minute walk from a park. Thank you.

It would have been nice to have a park every 10 metres. Minister Ong Ye Kung.

Mdm Chair, I will try to get all my dates and all my numbers right.

Thank you.

Mdm Chair, I will be talking about electric vehicles. Throughout my speech, I will refer to electric vehicles as EVs, then as for traditional vehicles running on fossil fuels through an internal combustion engine, I will just refer to them as ICEs.

Let me start with Prof Koh Lian Pin’s question, which is the net carbon savings due to transition from ICEs to EVs. There is a net carbon abatement by switching from ICEs to EVs, even if the electricity is generated by fossil fuels. In Singapore, where most of our power is generated from natural gas, the net carbon savings by switching from ICEs to EVs is about 50%. You halve it.

Today, in aggregate, vehicles on the whole emit about 6.4 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent per year. If the subset of light vehicles all ran on electricity, the total net carbon abatement would be about 1.5 to two million tonnes per year of CO2-equivalent per year. So, this abatement is about 4% of our total annual emissions, so not insignificant.

Hence, the Singapore Green Plan includes a push for EVs. We have a 2040 target to phase out ICEs and have all vehicles run on cleaner energy. To realise this vision, and given that COEs for cars last for ten years, we will require from 2030 all new car and taxi registrations to be of cleaner energy models. They can be electric, they can be hybrid, hydrogen fuel cell cars, and so on. As these technologies are evolving rapidly, we will monitor developments closely, and finalise the definition of registrable models well before 2030. To further pave the way for greener vehicles, we will also cease new diesel car and taxi registrations from 2025. As we know, diesel cars emit PM2.5 and they are even more pollutive.

Several Members have asked what steps will be taken to encourage the take up of EVs in Singapore and meet these targets, the 2030 and 2040 targets. Some Members have asked whether there are further interim targets. We used to have a 2040 target; we have just set a 2030 target. So, give us some time. When we gather momentum, maybe we can have more interim targets. For now, it is just these two.

I think three aspects will make a difference: taxes, regulations and chargers. Let me talk about them in turn.

First, vehicle taxes. The objectives of the COE system and upfront vehicle ownership taxes such as the Additional Registration Fee (ARF), are mostly to manage congestion, to which there is no difference between ICEs and EVs. Therefore, it is not appropriate to waive all or almost all vehicles, on electric cars, as suggested by Dr Lim Wee Kiak, Mr Ang Wei Neng, Mr Lim Biow Chuan.

Technological advancement is narrowing the price differential between ICEs and EVs rapidly. Experts think price equalisation will happen in 2025 or earlier. To give Members an illustration: the main cost of an EV is in the battery. In 2010, the cost was about US$1,000 per kilowatt-hour of battery power. By now, it is about US$140. So, it fell, in 10 years, from US$1,000 per kilowatt-hour to about US$140. Experts feel that when it reaches about US$100 per kilowatt-hour, this is the tipping point when there will be price equalisation between EVs and ICEs. In the meantime, while the prices are falling, we will offer tax incentives to EV owners.

We introduced the EV Early Adoption Incentive this year. Together with the enhanced Vehicular Emissions Scheme, the cost of owning an electric car can be lowered by up to $45,000. Since the start of the year, there have been about 100 new electric car registrations in Singapore. It is a small number, but we will ramp it up. Many mass-market electric car buyers still cannot benefit from the full $45,000 rebate, because there is a minimum payment of $5,000 for the ARF. So, to enable mass-market electric cars to benefit from the full rebate, we will remove the $5,000 minimum ARF.

As for road tax, it is a more complicated matter. We just implemented a significant downward revision for electric cars from 1 January this year. For certain models, the reduction is significant, as much as 40%. Notwithstanding this, we decided to review the matter further. Let me explain why.

A large part of road tax is a luxury tax. But luxury is subjective and hard to measure. So, for a long time, we have been using engine capacity as a proxy for luxury. The bigger the engine, the bigger the car, the higher the road tax. The same approach can be applied to electric cars. They do not have engine capacity, but we can design the road tax schedule based on propulsion power, measured in kilowatt-hour, as a proxy for luxury. Then, we should set the electric car road tax schedule such that electric and ICE cars with roughly the same look, feel and level of luxury are subject to the same road taxes. And this is inherently a subjective exercise and would not be very scientific. But it reflects the policy objective, which is that a large part of road tax is a luxury tax.

And if we take that approach and we then eyeball through the models of ICE and electric cars using their prevailing road tax schedules, we find that for the small and medium electric and ICE cars, their road taxes are quite comparable. But for the larger cars, they are a little bit off.

To illustrate, let us compare a 105 kilowatt MG EV, that is the most popular EV in Singapore now, and a 1,800 cc Renault Megane. Both are medium-sized family cars. Both subject to similar annual road taxes of around $1,000.

But for the slightly larger, mass market segment cars, it becomes a bit off. To illustrate again, a 150 kilowatt Hyundai Kona Electric Standard Utility Vehicle (SUV) is subject to about the same road tax as a 2,000 cc Audi Q5 or Q7. But I think Members will agree with me, the level of luxury between the two models is quite different.

Similarly, an entry model of the Tesla, which is the 225 kilowatt Tesla Model 3, and 3,000 cc Porsche Cayenne are subject to about the same road tax. So, also a bit off.

This problem exists because we have thus far linked the road tax schedules of electric and ICE cars by propulsion power, so quite scientific. And hence, we have inadvertently penalised the more power-efficient electric cars.

To address this, we will adjust the road taxes further for electric cars in the 90-230 kilowatt band.

With your permission, Mdm Chairman, may I ask the Clerks to distribute a handout showing the current and new electric car road tax schedules?

Yes. [A handout was distributed to hon Members. Please refer to Annex 1.]

I have been reminded by the Clerk to tell Members that you may also access these materials through the SG-Parl MP mobile app. That will save paper.

So, we will merge the current electric car road tax bands of 30-90 kilowatt and 90-230 kilowatt, merge them into one band and subject them to the current road tax formula of the lower band, the 30-90 kilowatt band.

The long and short of it is, we will bring down the road taxes of electric cars in the upper band. Using the examples earlier, a Hyundai Kona Electric will see its annual road tax fall from about $1,400, to $1,100. That of a Tesla Model 3 will drop from $2,300 per year, to $1,500. And this will make their road taxes comparable to ICE models with a similar look and feel.

Some car enthusiasts have observed that for big electric cars, those 230 kilowatt, 300 kilowatt, the road tax schedule is also a bit off. To illustrate, some have told me an electric Porsche Taycan is subject to significantly more road tax than a Porsche Cayenne. I acknowledge the concerns. But these are all big luxurious cars. I prefer to leave them alone for now. What is important is that we have now established the principles and policy for charging road tax on electric cars. As more models emerge, we will review the road tax schedule further, with a view not to over-charge electric cars vis-à-vis ICE cars.

The second area of work is to improve our regulations and standards. With your permission, Mdm Chairman, may I show an illustrative slide on the LCD screens please?

Yes, go ahead. [A slide was shown to hon Members. Please refer to Annex 2.]

Members may be wondering what these are. They are not the latest emojis, they are different kinds of plugs for EVs used around the world. And we have settled on two of these plugs, the one that is with a red border around it, which is Type 2 for AC charging and CCS 2 for DC charging. These are the most widely adopted now internationally, and we will adopt these as our national public charging standards.

The set of technical standards and safety precautions that governs the EV charging systems in Singapore is called the Technical Reference 25 (TR25). It is administered by the Energy Market Authority (EMA). To give dedicated focus to this work, we will amend legislation to transfer the role of regulator of EV charging systems from EMA to LTA.

LTA is also leading a comprehensive review of TR25 in partnership with industry players and various stakeholders and experts. We expect the review to be completed by end of this year. The idea is to make TR25 friendly to industry development, while ensuring safety.

While the review is on-going, LTA plans to set up regulatory sandboxes for commercial players to test and introduce new charging solutions. It is very important we get this right, because it will determine the level of private sector involvement in finding solutions to build up the infrastructure and drive EV charging and adoption.

A couple of Members also raised the issue of disposal and recycling of used EV batteries. This comes under the regulation of NEA and will be addressed at the MSE's COS speeches later.

But this leads us to the third point, which is how to expand the EV charging network, and is a point raised by several Members.

We are doubling our 2030 targets, from 28,000 to 60,000 by 2030. This comprises 40,000 in public carparks and 20,000 in private premises. If we assume one-third of cars are EVs by 2030, this translates into a EV to charging point ratio of about 5:1. And this ratio is better than many public estimates of the optimum ratio, which ranges from 10:1 to 5:1. But we are aiming for 5:1 by 2030.

The key to unlocking more charging facilities is to not insist on high-powered, or "fast" charging. Because that would require a major upgrading of almost all the power substations and the grid infrastructure all over Singapore, as envisaged and raised by many Members. It would be costly, time-consuming, stall the development and expansion of charging infrastructure, and severely impede the adoption of EVs.

I understand why Members like Mr Ang Wei Neng want charging to be faster. Given a choice, I think we all want charging to be faster. But the cost will be immense. And I think for most drivers, the deterrent to switch to EVs for now is the sheer lack of charging points. We can move much faster in making charging points available if we accept that for most users, instead of high-powered "fast" charging, "slow" or "overnight" charging is actually alright.

In US, Europe and Japan, EV users predominantly use slow charging, with fast charging, and they define it as 22 kilowatt and above, estimated to account for 10%-20% of charging demand. So, this requires drivers to change our habits. Drivers are used to a very quick visit to the petrol kiosks, pump, buy a drink and go. And so a mindset shift is required. After all, we are used to patiently charging all our electronic devices whether they are smart phones, smart watches or laptops, while we sleep, or while we are in office doing work. It will be the same for EVs. For this mindset shift to happen, we will need to make chargers available and accessible.

The average electric car, now, it has a range of 300-500 km, typically and it is increasing. That should require a typical user to fully charge about once every five days. Not every day. But once every five days. So, charging points will need to be shared, with different drivers charging on different days and at different times, especially in public car parks.

That way, we will be able to minimise electrical infrastructure upgrades. We can tap on the spare electrical capacity in all our public carparks and install charging points as quickly as possible.

And where the infrastructure supports it or where we decide to selectively upgrade the infrastructure, fast chargers can then be installed. And today, we can already find fast chargers in certain petrol kiosks, shopping malls, industrial and commercial premises.

As for fleet operators, P2P operators, for example, and in response to Mr Xie Yao Quan, about 60% of our taxis are already petrol hybrids. Our car fleet operators are committed to 100% cleaner energy fleets by 2040. But unlike typical car users, fleet operators will need fast charging in order to support their business operators. Mr Ang Wei Neng mentioned charging farms. It is not far-fetched. These are issues that Government and fleet operators will need to sit down, discuss and try to work out.

But let me say this: fleet operators will need to be prepared to invest in building up the infrastructure to support their operations. They can amortise the investment over many vehicles over many years of operations. Cost of electricity will very likely still work out much cheaper than petrol or diesel now.

How do we go about installing charging points? Where do we start? As Mr Lim Biow Chuan and Mr Xie Yao Quan suggested, we plan to make it mandatory for carparks in HDB towns, private residences like condominiums and commercial buildings to cater sufficient electrical capacity to support EV charging and ensure that a minimum number of charging points is installed. But we can only do this for new developments or developments undergoing major changes.

As for existing carparks, if they are in public housing estates, public sector agencies, such as HDB or URA, will drive the installation. We will implement this in phased packages, well-spread across the island and we will take a town-centric approach.

We aim to have at least seven "EV-Ready Towns" by 2025, where every HDB carpark will be fitted with charging points. They are, in alphabetical order: Ang Mo Kio, Bedok, Choa Chu Kang, Jurong West, Punggol, Queenstown and Sembawang. I should really add Tengah. So, there will be eight.

By the 2030s, we will strive to make every HDB town an EV-Ready Town.

For non-landed private residences, such as condominiums, in fact, mainly condominiums, we will introduce an EV Common Charger Grant to catalyse implementation. This is part of the $30 million allocation announced in the Budget, to kickstart the build-up of EV charging infrastructure.

The condominiums will be able to apply for the grant to defray part of the cost of installing a charger, subject to a quantum cap per charger. This will be made available to the first 2,000 chargers installed from July 2021. LTA will release more details.

But there is another practical problem which Mr Lim Biow Chuan has mentioned. To install charging points in condominiums, the management corporations (MCSTs) will need to convene general meetings and seek approval, which may not be forthcoming even with the grant.

The private sector can provide a solution. There are already a number of EV charging players, such as SP Mobility, Greenlots and Charge+, some of which are prepared to undertake all the upfront installation costs, in return for a period where they can collect charging revenue. So, the right tender specifications and commercial model can get this going.

Today, several of such projects already exist. They price charging at about 39 to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour. And this covers cost of electricity, the grid charges, installation cost plus their margins. What does this translate into – 39 to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour translates to about seven to nine cents per km travelled, which I think is competitive and attractive.

Mdm Chairman, I have just outlined the key steps we will take to drive EV adoption. In many countries, inter-city driving is common and that causes a lot of anxiety amongst EV users because they are afraid of battery depletion – in middle of a highway, you run out of battery, you are in trouble. But with our urban environment, Singapore is quite ideal as a test-bed for the rapid adoption of EVs.

We can be at the forefront of this technology, to advance this significant thrust of the Green Plan.

Second Minister Tan See Leng.

Mdm Chairman, over the last 50 years, our energy sector has evolved tremendously.

As we face a rising need to tackle climate change and, at the same time, competing higher energy demands from our population and industry, we will have to transition gradually away from natural gas and find low carbon energy sources to meet our needs progressively.

However, Singapore lacks alternative energy such as wind or tidal power, as Ms Yeo Wan Ling pointed out. Our main source of renewable energy is solar energy which has its limitations, due to its intermittency as well as the need for space.

Therein lies the challenge for all of us here in Singapore. How can we obtain energy that is: one, secure and reliable; two, affordable; and three, that is environmentally sustainable for ourselves over the the long haul. These three objectives constitute our "energy trilemma", as seeking to achieve each will entail trade-offs for the others.

I wanted to set this context in place by explaining further how we will forge ahead in our efforts to incorporate more renewable energy in our energy sources and enhance the efficiency of our power systems, and how we can continue to manage these trade-offs arising from our energy transition and the "energy trilemma", including smoothening price volatility as well as conserving energy together.

Mr Saktiandi Supaat asked about the Government's efforts in decarbonising our electricity grid. We are greening our energy sources, by developing our four "supply switches": natural gas, solar energy, regional grids and low carbon alternatives, such as hydrogen.

First, solar energy. We are accelerating our efforts to maximise and densify suitable solar deployment spaces, which Mr Liang Eng Hwa has also asked about. This includes scaling up the deployment of solar panels on rooftops and open spaces, such as reservoirs.

Today, as we speak, we are already one of the most solar dense cities, in terms of power generation, in the world. Nonetheless, we will continue to explore even more innovative ways to deploy solar and maximise solar deployment across all viable sites, such as untapped spaces, including existing land, canals and roads. For example, Terrenus Energy, together with JTC, will be extending their Solar Land project on Jurong Island to include multiple renewable energies onsite – solar, we are piloting tidal, wave and wind. Once this project is completed, this will be Singapore's first four-in-one renewable energy site and we could potentially have the highest renewable energy produced per square metre in the world.

As solar deployment increases, we will have to match this with Energy Storage Systems or ESS deployment. Beyond 2025, we target to deploy 200 megawatts (MW) of ESS. In order for us to enable this, EMA is test-bedding innovative solutions with the industry as well as the research community. For example, we are piloting Singapore's first floating ESS which can power over 600 4-room flats and this will enable us to study how batteries can be stacked vertically to reduce land use.

I am also happy to announce that we have awarded a grant to a consortium led by a local small and medium-sized enterprise, Eigen Energy, to pilot Singapore's first smart and clean energy powered service stations in Tampines, Pasir Ris and Lakeview. These stations will have a smart energy management system to integrate solar, energy storage and electric vehicle or EV chargers to help power their operations and provide one of the fastest public EV charging, when ready in the first quarter of 2022.

As we increase solar and ESS deployment, our power system will become more decentralised. To enhance our capabilities in grid planning, maintenance and asset management, we are developing a digital twin of Singapore's physical electricity grid. And we are working closely with the industry to progressively upgrade and refresh our physical grid.

The second switch of developing regional grids. EMA will issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a two-year trial of 100MW of electricity imports from Malaysia in March 2021. It is also initiating a cross-border power trade of up to 100MW under the Lao PDR-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project or the LTMS-PIP. This will also allow us to tap on the abundance of hydropower and other renewable energies that some of our Southeast Asian neighbours have.

Prof Koh Lian Pin asked what the Government is doing to assess the carbon footprint of our electricity imports. For the upcoming trial with Malaysia, EMA will put in place steps to verify the cleanliness of our imports, including requiring importers to submit documentary proof of carbon output. And the cleaner the proposal, the higher they will be scored and the more favourably will they be scored.

But these are just first steps, small steps towards a regional grid.

In MTI, we have plans to import more electricity and these trials will help us learn and build confidence in importing electricity over the longer term, to diversify our energy sources while tapping on clean energy in the source countries.

Mr Saktiandi Supaat also asked about how we could help our existing power systems to become more efficient. Singapore, over the middle to long-term, will need and will continue to need and rely on natural gas as we transition towards cleaner energy.

We are encouraging, therefore, our power generation companies, or gencos, to adopt more efficient technologies for their generation sets through two grant calls for the Genco Energy Efficiency Grant.

We will also facilitate the entry of advanced Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGT), which is the most efficient gas-fired generation technology that is available today, for new generation needs or to replace retiring generation sets.

These measures will make our economy more sustainable, but they will inevitably involve trade-offs. For instance, while we seek to accelerate solar deployment, our land constraints and the need for back-up storage adds to the costs.

Mr Dennis Tan asked during the Budget debate last week about our plan to step up electricity infrastructure for use by EVs in the coming years. MTI will work closely with MOT and LTA to enhance our electrical infrastructure to support the onboarding of EVs. This is why we call this prong of the Green Plan an "energy reset" strategy. Because some upgrading of power generation and grid infrastructure will be required. We will pace the upgrading of the infrastructure alongside with the adoption of the EVs.

Mr Saktiandi also asked about whether the current low electricity prices would pose a challenge in encouraging consumers to adopt more energy efficient measures to cut down on their electricity usage.

Mr Liang Eng Hwa also asked how importing electricity will impact electricity prices and the considerations that the Government has in managing any price volatility.

Indeed, wholesale electricity market prices are well-depressed today. Let me explain how we came to this situation, and what we will see, going forward.

Singapore has an open and competitive electricity market where prices rise and fall depending on demand and supply. Around 10 years ago, generation companies made commercial decisions to build power plants and contract natural gas based on the bullish projections of demand growth. However, these projections did not materialise and this has led to the current glut in our electricity market. Intense competition among the different gencos to sell electricity has led to electricity prices falling below the full cost of producing electricity.

With your permission, Mdm Chairman, may I display one slide on the LCD screen, please?

Go ahead. [A slide was shown to hon Members. Please refer to Annex 3]

Please take a look at the slide. As you can see, in red, it represents the long-run marginal cost of producing electricity. So, that is the true cost of what it takes to produce electricity today. The black line shows the current market's spot price that fluctuates over the last many years. This is the result of over capacity, currently.

This over-capacity situation will likely be alleviated in the near future. Wholesale electricity prices will also rise and normalise, with rising demand driven by the growth of sectors such as data centres, 5G networks, agri-tech, as well as the adoption of EVs. The low electricity prices today are currently also dis-incentivising the generation companies from investing in new plants.

Over the medium to long run, electricity prices normalising is inevitable. You can see from the chart, no company that is commercially-run will sell electricity below cost perpetually.

What we need to do is to prevent a swing from a glut to a severe shortage of capacity, and this will result in sharp price spikes; perhaps, even blackouts as what we saw in Texas just last month. Many electricity markets have encountered similar experiences. EMA has studied how these jurisdictions have managed their situations and we are also consulting the industry on the way forward. We will announce more details later this year and we are committed to smoothening these price surges and volatility.

Besides power generation capacity, electricity prices are also affected by the supply of energy. Please remember, all of us, we are importing close to 100% of our energy needs today. Of course, they are mainly natural gas.

In spite of our best efforts to deploy solar energy in Singapore, we will still need to rely on energy imports one way or another, and be subject to global prices, going forward.

Fuel prices had dipped to their lowest levels in the last 20 years due to the COVID-19 pandemic last year, but they are expected to rise, going forward, as global demand recovers. This will also likely cause electricity prices to increase as well.

The Government will do our best to manage our energy trilemma by introducing more renewable energy in our energy mix, by enhancing the efficiency of our power systems, and minimising the impact on prices. However, "right-pricing" of the energy prices is critical to encouraging prudent use of electricity.

We must adopt energy conservation as a way of life for all of us here in Singapore.

Besides managing the amount of energy we use, consumers can also help us reduce our carbon footprint by electrification. Minister Ong has already spoken about our ambitious plan to electrify vehicles.

Another example is how we can switch from using gas to electrical appliances for our cooking. It is also safer as the risk of gas leaks and fires are reduced. And some of the newer electrical cooking appliances, they do produce very, very good "wok hei", the heat that is required to give you very good hor fun. Mdm Chairman, in Mandarin, please.

(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Today, Singapore's energy needs are almost 100% met by imports, mainly of natural gas. Even with our best efforts in using solar energy, we will still need to rely on energy imports. Thus, we have limited control over prices.

The Government will do our utmost in reducing the impact on Singaporeans. The key is that everyone should conserve energy and make corresponding adjustments to our lifestyles. Energy conservation must become a way of life for all Singaporeans.

(In English): In conclusion, Mdm Chairman, the Government will continue taking a long-term approach in planning our energy needs, while balancing the need to be more environmentally sustainable; ensuring continued energy reliability and security, as well as managing price fluctuations and volatility. Even when prices do go up, we will do our best to ensure that this gradient is gradual, and the Government will act, where necessary, to minimise excessive surges.

Most fundamentally, it is our exhortation to all of us as fellow Singaporeans, that we must do our part to conserve energy, just like how we conserve water, and we all have to adjust our lifestyles accordingly.

It is only when we work together, we can maintain a sustainable, secure, reliable and resilient energy future for all of us.

Minister Chan Chun Sing.

Mdm Chairman, all of us in this House have spent the last 55 years defending and securing this little red dot of ours. We tried all ways to keep it going, growing and glowing.

In the next 50 years, we will have a chance to turn this Little Red Dot into a bright green spark – a bright green spark with a new economy, with a new way of life, that will provide our future generations with more options and look back with greater pride.

To achieve this, we will do three things. We will all need: (a) to go green by embracing a sustainability mindset in our production and consumption; (b) to grow green by embracing and seizing the new opportunities in the green economy; and (c) to glow green by being an inspiration to the world on how we can demonstrate positively, constructively, how a dense urban society can use our resources sustainably and leave behind a better future for generations to come.

Let us begin by going green. We must review the way we consume. In an increasingly carbon-constrained future, our personal consumption choices will have greater bearing on the environment. Whether it is choosing to use less air-conditioning, opting for public transport, or purchasing products that are more sustainably produced, all of us – as Minister Tan See Leng said – can adjust some bits of our lifestyle to make this transition. This is a commitment that we can all make. As Minister Grace Fu said, it is a commitment not just for our own benefit, it is a commitment to our future generations.

This commitment applies not just to individuals but also to corporates. In a carbon-constrained future, being able to operate and produce more sustainably will be key attributes of successful enterprises. Increasingly, consumers are much more discerning and place a greater emphasis on sustainable products and services.

This is where Enterprise Singapore (ESG) comes in, to help build a strong breed of local enterprises that can harness sustainability as a competitive advantage. We envision these enterprises to be pioneers and experts in developing solutions that are highly demanded in the green economy. Such solutions could range from clean energy, energy efficiency, waste valorisation, water treatment, and so forth. These enterprises would also possess the mindset that every project they undertake should account for the impact on the environment. More details on the Enterprise Sustainability Programme (ESP) will be released later this year.

Businesses will be increasingly mindful of the need to embrace Environmental, Social and Governance imperatives in their business practices. For those new to this journey, we can all start small. Success is the sum of many small steps, and success belongs to the determined. Sustainability must be in our mindsets.

As we commit ourselves to a greener future, we must also grow green, by seizing new opportunities in the green economy.

Our existing industries will continue to transform. For traditionally energy-intensive sectors such as petrochemicals and agri-tech, we will need to achieve breakthroughs in carbon and energy efficiency, through innovation. With our Industry 4.0 push, we are striving to manufacture more efficiently, using less materials, as well as producing more sustainably for the world.

Our Energy and Chemicals sector is becoming more vital in accelerating our change towards environmental sustainability. It will continue to enable many parts of our economy and it will continue to produce for the world. But it will do so much more sustainably. To get there, we are taking active steps to transform the sector.

We are partnering companies that are developing cleaner products and decarbonisation solutions. We are enhancing the Investment Allowance for Emissions Reduction (IA-ER) scheme, previously known as the Investment Allowance for Energy Efficiency Scheme. Apart from improving energy efficiency, the IA-ER scheme will also support projects that result in direct reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Details will also be announced later this year.

We are also stepping up decarbonisation and resource optimisation efforts at the plant and systems levels, to transform Jurong Island into a sustainable energy and chemicals park.

Ten years from now, we will also expect that global tourism will have sprung back into a more vibrant sector. But tourists will have a greater interest in sustainable travel options, for example, eco-friendly hotels and attractions. To prepare ourselves for these opportunities, we are transforming Sentosa into a carbon-neutral destination by 2030. Through such efforts, we will strengthen Singapore as an exemplary sustainable tourism destination.

But there are also new opportunities. Leveraging our strengths as a business hub, we envisage that our future industry mix will comprise more green growth sectors. We can envisage:

Singapore as having leveraged our brand of trust to grow a carbon services sector, with a strong value chain anchored in Singapore. People will turn to us for services including project development, financing, trading, for the credits market, as well as measurement, reporting and verification services.

Singapore’s capabilities and offerings in green financing will also be deepened, to catalyse the growth of new businesses in the green economy, while enhancing our competitiveness as a hub for sustainable solutions. Just as cashflow is the lifeblood of businesses, financing is a key enabler for the green economy.

But we must also pace our transformation. We must ensure that our industries are not displaced by sudden economic structural changes. I am certain Members of this House will agree with us that when we review our carbon prices, we must be very conscious of the impact that this will have on current and future competitiveness and the consequent impact on our jobs and livelihoods for all Singaporeans.

This brings me to the next point on opportunities for our people – the centrepiece in Singapore’s economic journey. We expect to see high demand for skills to help corporates, even governments, to navigate the complexities of the green transition. The transformation of our industries and the rise of the green innovation will germinate new jobs, to help solve sustainability problem statements faced by the region, and globally.

And Singaporeans can take advantage of these bright spots by upskilling and re-skilling ourselves. We can be better placed to capture these new opportunities. We can also help our corporates deliver on their sustainability mandates, and countries to advance their charge towards a more sustainable economy. And we will continue to find our place in the green economy.

Finally, we aspire to glow green. We can be a bright green spark, by being an inspiration to the world on how we overcome sustainability-related constraints. We have done so for water over the last 50 years. We have done it also for transportation, and the way we build and organise our city. We are going to do so for energy because that will be a big part of glowing green. Not just for ourselves but for the whole world. Singapore’s birth and growth have never been defined by circumstances, challenges or constraints. Instead we have always been defined by the way we respond, overcome and create opportunities for ourselves through it all.

This is why under the Research, Innovation, and Enterprise Plan (RIE) 2025, we are attracting companies to anchor their R&D activities in Singapore. We will continue to support the start-up and innovation eco-systems in sustainability-related sectors. We endeavour to help others overcome their sustainability constraints, both regionally and globally. Innovation and transformation are symbiotic. We can strive to overcome our challenges and in turn our solutions can provide options for the world.

Mdm Chair, ultimately, growing our green economy entails a stewardship of reserves – financially, socially, and environmentally. We must strive to go from brown to green, carbon to clean. Only then can we pass on a healthy and sustainable portion of these reserves to future generations.

Growing our green economy is also about a stewardship of opportunity. The bright spots that I mentioned and the ambitions that I have shared are not lofty ideas. These are potential real outcomes that we believe Singapore and Singaporeans can achieve – together. So, we urge everyone to consider how we can each contribute, how our economy will be greener, our people will be more relevant, and our society, ever resilient. This will be our new normal, our new charge and our new opportunity.

So, yes, there is a lot at stake for the environment; but also, for Singapore’s future and our economy and the livelihoods of Singaporeans. The road ahead may be long. But with resolve and cooperation, we think we can go fast, we can go far, and we can go together. And together we will not only defend this little red dot, we will turn this little red dot into a bright green spark to be an inspiration for future generations and the world. [Applause.]

We will take clarifications now. Mr Louis Ng.

Thank you, Madam. I was quite excited for a while when Senior Minister said we would reach half of our emissions by 2030 but then he burst my bubble. But I really hope that we can try to reach net zero emissions by 2050. If not, could I ask whether we can at least narrow the timeframe. So, instead of by the second half of the century, which could be 79 years' time, when I was hoping we can actually see net zero emissions within my lifetime. But if we can at least reduce here, maybe by 2060 or 2070. If not, can the Government at least consider to focus it on a per sector basis? So, something like what MOE has done which is that 20% of the schools will achieve carbon neutrality by 2030.

The second question really is for MOE – when can we expect the other 80% of the schools to reach carbon neutrality?

Third, Minister Tan mentioned about how we are planning to import hydro power from Lao PDR and that sounds environmentally friendly. But I just wonder whether we have also studied the environmental impact of building this hydro-electric power station, how destructive it is for the environment there and for the wildlife. I hope MTI can consider not just importing the renewable energy but making sure that it does not have that big an impact on the environment in other countries.

Senior Minister Teo.

Indeed, Madam, I think inherent in the series of questions that Mr Louis Ng asked, are all the trade-offs that we have to balance when we try and achieve the targets that he is talking about.

One of the things which we have to consider is whether we want to import electricity. Other jurisdictions, for example, claimed to have to achieve this target, but actually, they are importing nuclear energy from their neighbours. Is that something which Mr Louis Ng thinks is a good idea? There are different things that we need to do.

When we are considering importing clean and green energy from other countries, there are also other considerations which we have to take into account. All these things, inherently, have trade-offs.

Our targets, our LEDS by 2050 are based on what we can control ourselves and all the things that we are doing in all the different sectors within our control. We will do that to bring our emissions down by half. Roughly speaking, half of what we emit, we can control. The other half depends on what other people do and whether or not we are able to develop the technologies, some of which do not exist today; whether we are able to get importation of electricity; whether we are able to get carbon markets to work properly. Those are not things which are wholly within our control.

And as Mr Louis Ng said himself, even if we did all that, we have to consider the other consequences of all those actions.

These are imponderables which we need to consider with the passage of time. I am not in the business of bursting bubbles. And I certainly do not want to create a bubble which future generations will have difficulty trying to meet. We do not make promises which would cause future generations problems in trying to keep as well. I think Mr Louis Ng would probably agree with that.

Minister Lawrence Wong.

Mdm Chair, on Mr Ng's question on the school sector, we have some schools getting into net zero by 2030. Mr Ng asked what is the timeframe for the rest of the school sector. We will strive to do this as soon as possible. Certainly, I hope within my lifetime; but post-2030, we will try very hard to get all schools to be net zero.

It is not so difficult for the school sector compared to the whole of Singapore. But beyond just putting in the infrastructure to achieve net zero, what I had highlighted earlier which I think is much more important, is to get mindsets to change. We want to inculcate in our students from an early age the mindset of sustainability, to appreciate the importance of habits. I think that is far more important than just putting in solar panels and then putting in new technology and getting the school infrastructure to be net zero. That we will do; I think that for schools, because it is more compact, it is relatively easier. But getting the software, getting the understanding, the habits and the mindsets – that is an important endeavour we want to do in the school sector as well.

Minister Tan See Leng.

I thank Mr Louis Ng for the question. For the import from Lao PDR, in terms of the hydro power, it is a pilot. We will consider all possible sources of renewable energy. One of the key aspects of this thing would be that we would be getting all prospective importers to submit information on their energy sources as well as environmental studies that have been done to see what the impacts are. And that is why at this particular point in time, it is still a pilot. We are piloting from Lao PDR, we are also piloting from Malaysia.

And as we learn more in the months and in the years ahead, we will collate and find the best way forward.

Mr Saktiandi.

Mdm Chairman, thank you. First of all, I like to thank Senior Minister and all Ministers for giving a very detailed explanation on this issue. I have got two questions for Minister Tan. First is on the switches. He mentioned the range of switches, the regional grid switch, for example. It was answered somewhat. The first question is on the weightage of the regional grid – how many percent is it, as a whole, part of the switch, a consolidation?

Second is I am concerned about the impact on electricity prices for Singaporeans. Maybe you can share with us to reassure Singaporeans over the next five to 10 years, the impact on the increase in prices. Because you mentioned that: one, the electricity prices will normalise; second, data centres and digitalisation and EV charging will come on-stream; and third, the switches on boarding, including our exposure to regional grid exposures.

So, can I ask the Minister if he can share the plans to mitigate this rise in prices, if any going forward, given the possibility of convergence of these factors.

Minister Tan See Leng.

Thank you. Mdm Chairperson, as far as the weightage in terms of the four switches is concerned, as I alluded to earlier on, at this particular point in time, we are still managing it in a form of a very fine balance. As I have stated in my speech, we are really in this trilemma. What I am hoping to achieve is to send a message to everyone and I hope to get the support of everyone in the House, that a fundamental pillar that underpins the entire four-switch strategy is really energy conservation.

At this particular point in time, in terms of the regional power grid, they are pilots. We are trying to see how we can diversify and how reliable and how resilient and how hedged we can be in terms of applying our diversification strategy in terms of these energy imports from the different countries that is part of this regional ASEAN grid.

We are not able to commit to a long-term target in terms of how much percentage, weightage we are going to give each one of these switches. What we are doing is that we are accelerating all three of them contemporaneously, the regional power grids we are exploring. We are also working very closely under the RIE initiative in terms of looking at the R&D of developing low carbon alternatives, and of course, going very, very long into renewable energy as well.

With time, we should be able to provide this House with greater clarity and details of that strategy and how much traction we are able to gain.

Mr Pritam Singh.

Thank you, Madam. I thank the Ministers including Senior Minister Teo for sharing the more intricate details of the Green Plan. From an observer's perspective – a Singaporean looking at this – the targets are a very interesting part of the plan because with technology moving so quickly, I can imagine it is difficult to say when a certain thing can happen by.

I have got two questions. One was actually pertaining to a point with regard to the trade-offs that Senior Minister Teo alluded to in reply to Member Louis Ng's question about nuclear power. I recall seeing in the Government financial statements, a consultancy study that was done to study the prospect of the safe disposal of nuclear waste. And this was I think, a study that cost in excess of a $2 million. I can file a Parliamentary Question on this matter as to what were the findings of the Government, but certainly in terms of clean power, nuclear power that is a source that potentially should be looked at. So, it will be helpful to know what the Government's findings were in that regard.

My second question is for Minister Desmond Lee. We read in the mainstream media allusions to how land, forested area should be dealt with, just like how we deal with our fiscal reserves, very carefully, with a second key, almost. My question is for the public to better understand the trade-offs, because it is a sensitive subject for the members of the public to have open areas and green lungs in the country, what sort of processes take place in Government to ensure that the trade-offs that are taken to, for example, remove a forested area, is a very careful one; and there are checks and balances in that process to make sure that all other alternatives have been considered carefully?