Surprise, surprise. Looks like Singapore has been lagging behind in standards of air quality that’s benchmarked by the World Health Organization (WHO).
With a target to meet by 2020, a review by the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources (MEWR) has seen shortcomings in achieving targets for various pollutants over the last couple of years. But the government isn’t ready to call it in yet.
In a pre-Budget focus group discussion, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Masagos Zulkifli has stated that they will remain committed to combating air pollution, Channel NewsAsia reports.
Yeah well, hope things work out with Indonesia first, but we digress.
“Unfortunately if you look at our trajectory, we are not meeting our targets and therefore we need to do more to ensure that our air pollution issue is being addressed,” the minister said, adding that vehicular emission policies will be reviewed.
One of the reviews came to light after a six-month study by Assistant Professor Lynette Cheah from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), in hopes of obtaining alternative methods to power vehicles instead of conventional diesels.
As Asst Prof. Cheah states, while the technology (for electric cars) is available to us, marketing these vehicles will be a different story entirely as these new vehicles would be priced higher.
Other concerns lie with the distance the vehicle can travel in one charge, as well as a lack of ways to charge the vehicle on the go.
As for renewable diesels, while it has been proven that there’re immediate reductions in emissions, diesels at its core will still emit harmful pollutants — not to mention it’s double the cost compared to conventional diesels.
From the looks of things, it’ll be at least a decade before any chance of mass producing these new vehicles can happen. As for us, well… we’ll stick to the old-school public transport, and pray that our MRT train isn’t having an issue on the day we’re on it.
Reader Interactions