SINGAPORE — With the increasing complexity and interconnectedness of energy and environmental issues, “the problems that governments and industries face today need multi-disciplinary solutions,” said Professor Michael Quah, Director of the Energy Office at the National University of Singapore. It was with this purpose in mind that the Sustainability, Environment and Energy Research (SEER) symposium was created.

At the second annual SEER symposium held at NUS last month, an international panel of academics and government and industry representatives came together to discuss various topics related to energy efficiency, green technology and innovations, environmental policy and waste management.

THE CURRENT LANDSCAPE

In the following decade, six major trends will become apparent worldwide, according to Dr Lorenzo Casarosa, Senior Consultant at DNV KEMA Clean Technology Centre, and one of the speakers at this year’s SEER symposium. “There will be increased electricity demand due to growth in population and income, especially in emerging markets and nations; the emergence of environmental and social responsibility; the rapid decline in the supply of fossil fuels, which intensifies the search for alternatives; ageing assets and workforce; advancing technology and innovation; and maintaining reliability of the future energy mix,” he said.

Dr Casarosa also gave his comments on likely responses to these trends. “(In the future,) we’ll change as consumers, moving from being passive consumers to being more engaged and participating producers and consumers, termed ‘prosumers’,” he said.

“We’ll see smart homes and appliances linked with information and communications technologies so you can remotely control intelligent homes, or robotics at a domestic level. Electric mobility and cars will be a major component of electricity demand.”

RESPONSES TO LOCAL CHALLENGES

Energy-efficient buildings are part of the local landscape: There are more than 1,200 green commercial, residential and government buildings in Singapore, with 202 building projects receiving the Green Mark Award last year from the Building and Construction Authority for their use of energy-efficient features and designs.

However, there has not been a rush to retrofit existing buildings with energy-efficient features, due in part to the complexity of the endeavour and the unfamiliarity some may feel towards the technologies involved. Associate Professor Lee Siew Eang from the School of Design and Environment at NUS estimates it will take ten years just to make the entire NUS campus, which has more than a hundred buildings, energy efficient.

“In Europe, (making buildings energy efficient) has been part of their lifestyle since the energy crisis in the ’70s, which encouraged the European governments to invest in and develop energy conservation policies, and many (European countries) have been successful,” said Assoc Prof Lee.

“However, in Singapore, energy efficiency is a relatively new trend. The number of consultants and contractors who have the know-how and the number of technologists available is still small, so the risk factor is considered high, and you pay a higher cost,” explained Assoc Prof Lee.

“We’ve been telling the Housing Development Board that if they adopt some of these technologies in a widespread manner, they will become common technologies overnight, and the risk disappears.”

An issue that may be more familiar to Singaporeans is that of waste management. During the symposium, Mr Toh Wee Khiang, Director of the Environmental Technology Office at the National Environment Agency, discussed the limitations of the current practice of incinerating waste and the possible measures to combat them.

About 7,500 tonnes of garbage is processed at Singapore’s four incineration plants every day, and converting it into incineration ash reduces its volume by 90 per cent and produces more than 2 per cent of our electricity supply. The incineration ash is hauled by barges to the offshore Semakau landfill.

“Incineration works well for us; it is effective in treating the kind of waste we generate,” said Mr Toh. “However, ultimately it is not sustainable, because the volume of generated waste is increasing, due to a growing population and rising affluence.”

The estimated expiry date of Semakau is between 2035 and 2045, depending on how well we do our recycling efforts, according to Mr Toh. “In the Land Use Plan issued this January by the Ministry of National Development, there were plans to reclaim sea space around Pulau Semakau after 2030, because that’s the only place where you can find land to create a new landfill. But that sea space is not dead; it contains coral reefs, which is something few know about,” he said.

There is another problem with our current waste-disposal system, according to Mr Toh. “It isn’t very efficient in terms of the amount of energy it can extract from waste,” he said. “This isn’t because we can’t build efficient incineration plants, but because of the kind of waste we incinerate.” The presence of certain chemicals in the waste restricts the range of incineration temperatures, which limits the amount of energy we can extract from burning waste, he explained.

The solution to these problems can be quite elegant: Separating waste can reduce the amount of waste sent for incineration and provide useful products at the same time. “By separating our waste stream so that it is more homogenous, we can explore alternatives like gasification and pyrolysis, two processes that produce synthesis gas, or syngas. Every petroleum product can be derived from syngas instead, so that gives us possibilities to replace petroleum,” said Mr Toh.

Upcycling, which is converting waste materials into something that has higher value, is another option. For example, waste plastic sells for $0.30 per kilogram, but it is possible to convert waste plastic into carbon nanotubes, a valuable material in material science and electronics, which sell for $120 per kilogram. We can also consider turning the disadvantages of waste materials into their advantages: Plastic is a problem because it is inert, does not corrode and lasts forever, but these features make it a good candidate for a building material, explained Mr Toh.

He said: “Because of the food waste and wet waste that go into our garbage, all the valuable recyclable material becomes useless, and not sorting our waste is the biggest reason why we can’t apply these solutions.”

“I have a dream that one day we’ll realise that landfills start just outside our front door, and then we’ll be more conscious about what we throw away and how we do so,” concluded Mr Toh.

NUS AND THE SEER SYMPOSIUM

For NUS, the SEER symposium is of special significance. “The SEER symposium benefits NUS by positioning the university as an institution that is fully aware of and integrated with government and industry on what their needs are,” said Prof Quah.

“We’re going beyond our Ministry of Education key performance indicator — to become the top university in Asia — by serving the nation in an integrated way. It presents to government and industry a university that is not only top of its class, but also top of its game in delivering solutions when needed.”

Said Prof Quah: “We named the symposium SEER for a reason: It stands for ‘sustainability, environment and energy research’, but it also refers to an expert who can give forecasts of the future.”