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Have you ever wondered what eating meat, tumble drying our clothes, and driving a car does to our environment?

We thought not.

Every action we take affects the environment, directly or indirectly. The combustion of fossil fuels for electricity, coal mining and Gas and Oil production generate greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide and methane) and the net amount of greenhouse gases generated is known as our Carbon Footprint. The average carbon footprint for a person globally is close to 4 tonnes and in Singapore 8.56 tonnes. As is focused in The Paris Agreement, to prevent the global temperature rise by 2-degree Celsius, the average carbon footprint per person needs to be reduced to 2 tonnes per year.

This feat is, however, easier said than done. All individuals, communities, and nations must make continuous, consistent, and vigorous efforts to reduce the global carbon footprint to 2 tonnes per person. Interrelated terms like Carbon Neutral, Net Zero, and Climate Positive have been circulating in society for a while now. More and more companies claim to be carbon neutral and cause these terms to be used interchangeably. However, the diversity of phrases and the lack of clarity around them has misled well-intentioned consumers. Hence, it’s time we dig deeper into these terms and understand what they mean -

1. Carbon Neutral: Defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary as the balance between emitting carbon and absorbing carbon emissions from carbon sinks, the term carbon neutral refers to making the net release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere zero. Carbon sinks are systems that absorb more carbon dioxide than they emit, like forests and oceans.

1. Net Zero Carbon Emissions: Net-zero emissions refer to the overall balance of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) produced and GHG emissions taken out of the atmosphere. Net-zero describes the point in time where humans stop adding to the burden of climate-heating gases in the atmosphere.

1. Climate Positive or Carbon Negative: This occurs when more carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere than is emitted. Then, an organisation or individual has a negative amount of carbon emissions and positively impacts the climate.

Countries across the world are trying to reduce their carbon emissions and become net zero. Unfortunately, it is not possible to bring down the emission levels in all the industries to zero. Some industries like aviation and agriculture will always emit and to tackle these issues, the goal set for each country is ‘Net Zero’ for the economy as a whole. Considering the technological, geographic, and economic challenges, achieving net-zero emissions in Singapore will be a challenge. We benefit significantly from our small size and equatorial location in regards to trade and reducing exposure to climate hazards like typhoons, but the trade-off is that our geography severely hampers effective carbon dioxide removal approaches in Singapore. In addition, we lack large forested areas where we can extensively replant local vegetation to tackle the issue of emissions on a large scale. Apart from that, we do not have large renewable energy potential from bio energy, rivers, wind and tidal options.

Nevertheless, Singapore is doing its best to minimise climate change, and its mitigation vision plan has two main objectives. First, a peak of absolute carbon dioxide emissions of 65 million tonnes by 2030, and second, a goal of halving peak emissions to 33 million tonnes by 2050, achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. The low-carbon targets for greener buildings in construction and retrofitting, higher energy labelling and performance standards, as well as the nationwide adoption of electric vehicles by 2040 enable and enhance decoupling. These efficiency measures are significant and will augment carbon dioxide removal technologies, especially in cities.

While the government does its part on a scalable level, we can take actions on an individual level and contribute to a better world. Reducing the amount of energy utilised daily, decreasing the consumption of animal products, shopping locally, traveling smartly, and reducing the amount of waste we produce are a few of the steps we can take in our journey towards Net-Zero.

We know you can. Do YOU think you can?

*E-missions - Environment Missions