WASHINGTON – Singapore and the United States will work together to help Asean develop its regional power grid and shift away from non-renewable fossil fuels to clean energy, the two countries’ top diplomats announced on Friday.
They will also step up their cooperation in tackling climate change in several new areas, from reducing deforestation to encouraging energy-efficient buildings.
“The United States and Singapore are both committed to combating the climate crisis and accelerating the clean energy transition at home and across the Indo-Pacific,” said the two countries in a fact sheet on Friday.
“We are committed to making the 2020s the decisive decade for climate action,” they said, noting that the window to take action to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 deg C was rapidly narrowing.
Heating beyond that threshold could bring on catastrophic effects that could be irreversible, according to the scientific consensus backing the 2015 Paris Climate Accords.
Singapore and the US will intensify their climate cooperation in five areas: regional energy transition, low- and zero-emission technologies, nature-based solutions, urban decarbonisation, and capacity building.
These efforts include helping to develop regional power grid interconnections as part of a joint feasibility study on regional energy connectivity, and encouraging public and private sector finance to fund renewable energy and infrastructure development.
“We’re partnering to advance our clean energy across Asean, including the Asean power grid, which will facilitate renewable energy development and deployment throughout the region, and help Singapore transition to net-zero emissions by 2050,” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a press conference alongside Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan.
They will also work together to increase the demand and supply of technology that lowers carbon emissions to nearly zero, especially in particularly tricky sectors like shipping and aviation.
These sectors tend to rely heavily on fossil fuels, and slashing their emissions is either prohibitively expensive or next to impossible to do with current technology.
The US and Singapore will also look at nature-based solutions, such as blue carbon – capturing and storing carbon dioxide in the world’s oceans and coastal ecosystems – and using land more sustainably.
In addition, they will see if emissions can be cut on city-wide levels through urban decarbonisation, focusing on buildings, transport and circular waste management.
These efforts build on the climate partnership launched in August 2021 when US Vice-President Kamala Harris visited Singapore and represent “new frontiers” in Singapore and America’s cooperation, said the two countries.
