What is clear is that human activity is at least partially responsible for climate change.

What's clearer is that it will take the combined efforts of government leaders, businesses, and individuals to make even a dent in the global warming train rushing us all to an uncertain and potentially unpleasant future.

But the clearest lesson of all is that we have to find a better, more sustainable way to live. It's a massive task. So what is Singapore doing to get there? And how much power do we, as consumers and individuals, have in protecting the future of the world?

Hurricane Katrina gave the climate change debate a boost, but the increase in the incidences of violent hurricanes sit at the tip of the proverbial iceberg. It's a proverb that may not make much sense in about a century's time. Permafrost is melting, polar bears are drowning, water levels are rising – and there is more hard evidence that points to a warming world.

The five hottest years on record according to NASA were 1998, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005. The average surface air temperature of the globe rose by 0.6°C and by almost 1°C in Europe in the last century. According to experts, it could rise between 1.5°C to 4.5°C in the next century. For perspective, the global average in the last Ice Age was just 5°C lower than it is now.

In short, the Earth is heating up, and with rising temperatures, sea levels are rising – which in turn affects our weather, potentially our land area, and the lives of many island inhabitants of Earth. Warmer water is jet fuel for hurricanes. Warm, diluted seawater also potentially affects everything from monsoon patterns to temperature-regulating gulf-streams.

Scientists' observations are that human activity has contributed significantly to the warming of our planet. More specifically, it is the fossil fuels burnt to generate electricity that is indispensable for urban everyday life and industry and the running of vehicles that contribute to this destructive process. In Singapore, our power plants generate electricity from burning fossil fuels, such as natural gas and oil. Greenhouse gases released in the earth's atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide generated from these activities, turn up the heat.

It's easy to sit in our homes in this concrete, urban jungle, far from such erratic weather conditions and ask, "What has global warming got to do with Singapore? Or with me?" The fact is our fate is intertwined with the rest of the world's global warming and environmental changes know no national boundaries. As citizens of the planet, we contribute to the problem, but it means we can also be part of the solution.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected that the sea level could rise by 9 cm to 88 cm by 2100 because of global warming. At that rate, Singapore could lose land due to flooding from higher sea levels, and our coasts will be increasingly eroded. Because we are relatively low-lying, and just a small island, the increased frequency and intensity of weather patterns such as heavy rainfall and tropical storms could affect us directly too.

It's a bleak glimpse into one of many worst-case scenarios, but there's hope yet. The window of opportunity for change is still open, and world leaders have recognised this. Climate change has become a high priority in many countries – moving from the periphery of attention and the purview of environmental ministries to major portfolios in departments of state and federal premiers.

Tackling the energy issue seems to be a major solution of choice – promoting renewable energy and maximizing energy efficiency are some of the most immediate ways to wedge that window of opportunity open while these and other solutions and alternatives are developed. Industries and companies, pressured by different quarters, motives, and convictions, are beginning to see beyond cursory CSR publicity to charting profitable routes to greenness. Even though global warming inertia means we might not see the effects of these solutions immediately, we'll still be compensated with a cleaner environment to begin with. Beyond that, who knows? Good decisions might ripple into unexpected positive fallout, just as the fallout of centuries of bad decisions got us to this point.

The beauty of finding solutions to climate change is that it's an agenda that puts the world on the same page, whether or not everyone agrees on the route to sustainability. But they're solutions that go beyond policies and industry initiatives. Consumers and individuals have a role too – in choosing whether or not to change the way we live. We could be the responsible generation, the one that took the chance to change humanity's fate.

The future of the world is in all our hands. And that's our privilege.

Think global, act local: Buying into Kyoto's potential Singapore's local solution to this global problem focuses on energy efficiency. Like many other environmental solutions, it's one that requires critical mass participation to find success.

On 12 April, 2006, Singapore took the major step of acceding to the Kyoto Protocol. As a non-Annex 1 Party to the Protocol, Singapore does not have greenhouse gas reduction commitment. We have nonetheless set a target to reduce carbon intensity by 25 per cent from 1990 levels by 2012 and had implemented programmes to reduce CO2 emission. We are also eligible to participate in greenhouse gas reduction projects under the Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and take advantage of the economic benefits from selling the carbon credits derived when implementing CDM projects.

To make this happen, NEA's efforts have been multi-pronged, focused on energy efficiency initiatives targeted at various groups in the community, while balancing growth and productivity. NEA has been appointed the Designated National Authority for the purpose of providing host country approval to CDM projects being implemented in Singapore.

On the local front, another initiative towards curbing global warming is NEA's partnership with the Singapore Environment Council (SEC) with the launch of the Climate Change Awareness Programme on 22 April 2006. As the name implies, this year-long public education programme aims to raise awareness of climate change. The focus was to inform the public about the link between energy use and greenhouse gas emissions and how this could lead to global warming. Simple changes in lifestyles and habits were highlighted
to encourage the public to be more energy efficient.
(See box story for more details.)

Energy Audits Take Off
Recently, Wyeth Nutritionals vindicated one of NEA's efforts to engage the private sector in increasing energy efficiency. The company is on track to shave $300,000 off its annual energy bill by September 2006, thanks to an energy audit they had conducted, and changes they are making after the audit.

Energy audits are one of the most basic win-win ways of improving energy efficiency. To begin with, they make commercial sense – if companies implement the recommendations provided by the specialist energy service company (or ESCO) conducting the audit that are economically and technically viable, they stand to save quite a bit of money. In the larger scheme of things, energy use would be optimised, less energy would be wasted, which means less fossil fuels would be wasted as well. It's not much of a leap to imagine the potential magnitude of this if every company came on board, especially in a growing, highly-urbanised Singapore.

So for a start, to encourage manufacturing and building owners to carry out energy audits, NEA last April launched the Energy Efficiency Improvement Assistance Scheme, or EASe, a $10m initiative of the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources (MEWR) and NEA.

It encourages companies to improve the energy efficiency of
their facilities by engaging accredited ESCOs to carry out detailed engineering appraisals of their energy consumption and identify specific energy efficiency improvement measures for implementation by the companies. They analyse the efficiency of a company's heating, cooling, ventilation and other systems that consume electricity, oil, or gas, and suggest ways to reduce consumption.

To help ease the cost of the audit, a Singapore registered company with a building or manufacturing facility in Singapore can apply for funding from EASe of up to 50% of the cost for such appraisals, or up to $200,000 for each building or facility.

The improvements in energy efficiency as a result of EASe will not only benefit Singapore as a whole, but also give the environment industry a boost. Some $200 million is expected to be invested in energy saving measures as a result of EASe. This, in turn, is estimated to bring about $40 - $80 million in annual cost savings.

In light of rising electricity bills and oil prices, companies are now keen to make use of the EASe to conduct energy audits to cut their utility bills.

By end-June, $639,000 of the $10 million fund had been committed to the 24 companies that wanted to conduct audits.

EASe, along with two new initiatives launched simultaneously to kick-start the process, were intended to reduce up to 190,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year by 2012 and help achieve the target of 25% improvement in carbon intensity between 1990 and 2012.

Going beyond monetary incentives, NEA launched the Energy Smart Building Scheme in December last year. It recognizes building owners whose buildings come in at the top 25% of energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality. Office buildings were the first to come under the scheme, with the intention to include hotels, shopping complexes and hospitals in the near future.

The companies and partners who came on board this early in the game saved money and set convincing examples in their industries.

Public Sector Walks the Talk
Of course, who better to set an example than the public sector?

So NEA simultaneously targeted the public sector with another energy saving project. Eight public sector agencies participated in an NEA/EDB pilot project on energy performance contracting to improve their energy efficiency.

These agencies are engaging ESCOs to carry out a detailed engineering evaluation of the energy consumption at their particular facility or building. Just as in ESCO audit, solutions to reduce consumption are generated and implemented. ESCOs are then paid according to the success of the solutions they recommend in reducing the consumption, or provide financial guarantees that their recommendations will bring about the promised energy savings.

The participating public sector agencies are MEWR, CAAS, MOF, MOM, IRAS, MAS, Changi General Hospital and Singapore General Hospital.