Beijing Energy and Environment Exhibition 2008 Review

(This article is contributed by our guest writer, Julian Wong, and was first published in The Green Leap Forward.)

This is the 50th post for The Green Leap Forward! To celebrate, we visited the 2008 China (Beijing) International Energy Saving and Environmental Protection Exhibition held at the Beijing Exhibition Center this past weekend (Oct 17 through 20).

The first thing that strikes the visitor is the Cathedral-like grandeur of the Beijing Exhibition Center. It was opened in 1954 “with the late Premier Zhou En-Lai cutting the red ribbon and Chairman Mao Tse-Tung contributing poetic thoughts.” It doesn’t look like it is LEED-certified, but being more than half a century old, visitors could take heart in the fact that the building’s carbon debt has probably been paid off a while ago. Read more

Singapore Energy Conference

The Singapore Energy Conference, held at the Raffles City Convention Centre, is the flagship event of the International Energy Week (3-7 November 2008). It will be a forum for policymakers from government or industry, to engage in dialogue with each other and also with experts and representatives from various research institutes, policy think tanks, and energy industry players and other partners on the challenges, possibilities and solutions to powering cities of the future.

Programme Highlights

• Singapore Energy Lecture by Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew
• Ministerial Dialogue and Keynote Addresses from leading energy experts and officials
• Presentations by industry leaders and multi-national energy companies – including Shell, ExxonMobil, Neste Oil, Keppel and GHK Company
• Interactive panel discussions to provide speaker-delegate interaction
• Roundtable discussion forums to develop policy briefs
• Singapore Energy Conference Dinner

Speakers

• Prof S. Jayakumar, Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security, Singapore
• Mr S. Iswaran, Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry, Singapore
• Mr Malcolm Wicks, M.P., Minister of State for Energy, United Kingdom
• Mr Peter Schwartz, Cofounder and Chairman, Global Business Network
• Mr Robert A. Hefner, Founder and Owner, GHK Company
• Ms Eileen Claussen, President, Pew Center on Global Climate Change and Strategies for the Global Environment
• Prof John Deutch, Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Visit: www.singaporeenergyconference.com for more information.

Asian Youth Energy Summit 2008

Venue: International Conference Centre, 29 Heng Mui Keng Terrace (beside the National University of Singapore)

Energy Carta is organising the Asian Youth Energy Summit 2008 from 30 to 31 Oct 2008, as part of the International Energy Week. The conference includes panel discussions and exhibitions on clean energy and sustainable development, and speakers include:

• Claire Chiang, Senior Vice President, Banyan Tree Holdings
• Joachim Luther, CEO Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS)
• Robert Dixon, Head of Energy Technology Policy Division, International Energy Agency
• Neil McGregor, Managing Director, PowerSeraya
• Ichiro Kawada, President, JAIC Asia Capital Pte Ltd

For details and registration, visit http://www.AYES2008.com.

Energy Partnership

Energy Partnership is a registered Singapore Energy Saving Consultancy firm. We offer Energy Partners program and professional energy saving services to commercial and residential projects to improve their energy efficiency.

Address: 9 Jurong Town Hall Road, #02-68 iHub, Singapore 609431

Telephone: +65 6561 1709

Fax: +65 6463 4515

Email: business@energy-partnership.com

Website: www.energy-partnership.com

Tuas Power is building Singapore’s first ‘clean coal’ power plant

Tuas Power is going ahead with its plan to build Singapore’s first clean coal and biomass plant. We expressed concerns about Tuas Power’s proposed plans in our previous post, Red dot goes black?, and our worries have come true.

We wrote the following letter to The Straits Times to express our concerns about the use of coal by Tuas Power:

I refer to the article, “Tuas Power to build $2b ‘clean’ plant” by Clarissa Oon (ST Sep 26).

Clean coal is an oxymoron as coal is associated with multiple environmental problems such as habitat destruction, acid rain and global warming. Burning coal produces higher levels of carbon dioxide, sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, particulates and mercury.

With these environmental impacts in mind, Tuas Power and the National Environment Agency need to reassure the public and concerned environmentalists on the use of coal in the new plant.

Would the new plant meet the relevant air emissions and environmental regulations? Are carbon emissions per kilowatt hour higher for the new plant as compared to a natural gas-fired plant? Would the use of coal in the new plant lead to greater use of coal by other power generation companies?

This switch to using coal by Tuas Power seems to contradict the government’s efforts and plans on sustainable development. The new plant should not increase Singapore’s environmental impacts, especially our carbon emissions. If not, it would seem that we are moving one step forward and two steps backward on our green efforts.

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