P080901-007: Singapore's Climate Change Report
Principal Investigator(s): Ho Juay Choy
Collaborator(s): Dickson YEO
Singapore has participated in the review with four other Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, with the intent of obtaining consensus and cooperation among policy makers in the region on the steps needed to address climate change challenges. The convener, the Asian Development Bank envisions that an improved understanding of the economics of climate change will be attained to enable policy makers in the region to adopt the necessary actions particularly based on the needs of participating countries to address climate change.
P080601-006: The Geopolitics of Energy Supply Security: A Look at Energy Diversification Strategies
Principal Investigator(s): Elspeth THOMSON
Collaborator(s): Valerie CHOY
With a view to learn more about the geopolitics of energy security, this project will compare and analyse the energy diversification strategies of several countries in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. The main reasons for energy diversification are concerns about the depletion of oil and gas reserves, the vulnerability of oil and gas in transport, and also worries about how the use of fossil fuels, are causing climate change. This project will examine the success or lack thereof of these countries’ attempts to diversify and discuss the implications for each country alone, the region in which it falls, and for global energy security.
P080601-005: Production and Use of Biofuels in Asia and the Implications for the Environment
Principal Investigator(s): Elspeth THOMSON
Collaborator(s): Adrian ZHOU
In recent years, considerable experimentation in biofuels production in Asia, primarily using palm oil to produce a fuel suitable for motor vehicle engines, has been carried out in the region. The international price of oil had been steadily climbing and had reached a high of USD147 in July 2008, but since then it had fallen to less than half of this. Most analysts believe the price of oil will eventually soar again as “peak oil” approaches. Thus governments and the private sector are continuing their research into biofuels, hoping to be ready when supplies of gasoline and diesel become difficult to procure and are exorbitantly expensive. Governments also want to be seen to be helping to reduce the emission of the greenhouse gases causing climate change. However, over the past year, several studies have been published asserting that biofuels do not actually save much energy and divert precious cropland and water supplies from food production. Thus, the future potential of biofuels at this time is anything but certain. This project will assess what role, if any, biofuels might play in the coming years in Asia.
P080601-004: Energy Consumption Behaviour in Singapore
Principal Investigator(s): CHANG Youngho
Collaborator(s): Benjamin TANG
This study examines the drivers of real time electricity demand in Singapore using a Two-Stage Least-Squares (TSLS) regression. Explanatory variables include price, income, prior period electricity usage, ambient temperature, and a weekday/weekend dummy variable; first stage instrument variables are generation fuel prices, inflation, previous period electricity price and quantity, income and ambient temperature. This study aims to measure the amount of energy use rebound from generation efficiency gains, proposing the usage of either technical or financial indicators for the measurement of efficiency gains.
P080601-003: Electricity and Gas Market Governance, Development and Liberalisation in ASEAN
Principal Investigator(s): CHANG Youngho
Collaborator(s): Benjamin TANG
The project investigates the impact of Liquefied Natural Gas terminal on the electricity market in Singapore. There is a planned installation of a LNG terminal with annual capacity of 3 metric tonnes (or around 155 billion cubic feet) by 2013. This capacity represents one-third of current Piped Natural Gas (PNG) supplies into Singapore. From a macro-view, Singapore’s projected terminal volume is around 3% of Asia’s imports. Specifically, our research includes the estimation of bi-variate causality between fuel cost and electricity prices, the impulse response of crude and fuel oil prices on electricity prices; concluding with a variance decomposition analysis. We propose the use of “burner tip parity” (Brown & Yucel, 2008) as a basis of estimating LNG prices into Singapore, with the separation price into the two components: transport cost and energy substitution.
P080501-002: Development of a System of Indicators to Track Changes in Singapore’s Economy-wide Energy Efficiency
Principal Investigator(s): ANG Beng Wah
Collaborator(s): ZHOU Peng
Energy Efficiency is a vital component of a country’s energy strategy. As part of a national priority for improving energy efficiency, many OECD countries have established a national system of indicators to track changes in economy-wide energy efficiency over time. A system of energy indicators can show how the efficiency of energy use and its components are changing, improve our understanding of the role of efficiency improvements in the changing energy markets and help evaluate fulfilment of the energy efficiency improvements targets set. In addition, it can compliment other inputs to energy-related policy and programme analyses and help raise public awareness about how and why energy efficiency has changed over time. The main purpose of this proposal is to develop such a system of indicators for Singapore taking into account the special characteristics of its energy demand structure.
P080501-001: Energy and CO2 Emissions Embodied in International Trade: A Review and its Implications on Singapore
Principal Investigator(s): ANG Beng Wah
Collaborator(s): ZHOU Peng, HUANG Huei Chuen, HUM Wei Mei
Singapore’s annual international trade figure as a percentage of its GDP far exceeds that of the world average and is one of the highest in the world. What is the impact of the country’s trade on its annual energy consumption and CO2 emissions figures? How do Singapore’s energy consumption and CO2 emissions associated with its “domestic demand” of goods compare with the respective figures associated with its “domestic production” of goods? The latter indicators are those that have been widely used for reporting purposes, such as for country ranking by energy intensity or CO2 emissions, and in international agreements related to climate change including the Kyoto Protocol. This project is a review of the methodologies and the situations for countries that have been studied in this subject area. With these findings and a better understanding of the local situation, this project will look into the scope, the most appropriate technique and the data set needed if a full scale study is to be conducted for Singapore.