I was just chatting with a Christian friend who purportedly likes rules because they make things clear to follow and, hence, help determine the right course of action or decision. Yet this friend feels tortured when she is somehow made to break rules, or when rules are suspended in her favour after she has broken them.
I asked if she love those rules in a manner that is not about practicality or functionality but actually appreciate the heart of the rules and meaning of them. Not always, she recognises.
Yet the Psalmist could say in Psalm 112 as well as 119 (they may or may not be written by the same author) that he delights in God’s laws and statues or that one who delights in it is blessed. How do you love rules? How do you delight in these things anyways? Surely it is because you’ve grasp and understood the spirit beyond them and what they were set out to do. And in order to do that you, must embrace the character and spirit of the one who have put these rules in place.
It is in fearing God, loving God where we find ourselves delighting in the statues of God because He had put them in place as a manner of relating to us and guiding us, revealing His intentions and His designs. And that’s why the Bible often portrays obedience as a consequence of love. That is what it means to fear God – to be in awe of Him, His works, His intents. We can love God, and learn to love His laws but still struggle with them, and struggle with obedience. Until we are about to allow our will to be subject to Him, and to have our will be aligned to loving and serving Him, there will always be a tension.
Which is why I determined that each day, we are choosing to be Christians all over again. Conscious that our every deed and, in fact, every decision will bring us back to consider our faith in the Lord.
One of the things that the modern democracies are struggling now is with making clear judgment or assessments about things including truth. Having been used to mostly civil public discourse for decades, there are groups which are sick of endless debates and trying to take shortcuts. And often, the shortcuts means both the left and right of society are coroborating to destroy the foundations of democratic debates and wrestling but instead resorting to de facto power.
If that is seen as a solution to winning the superpower race for the US, it is seriously misguided. De facto power isn’t so much what reigns in China. Rather, it is ultimately a government’s care for countrymen and ability to uplift the bottom strata of society that wins legitimacy and organising authority. Think of governance and leadership in any country as an organising authority – this group helps coordinate things that do not naturally emerge in the market, and make decisions on trade-offs.
Democracy tries to push the debate on trade-offs to a wider, more diverse group and that forms politics. But what are the issues to push out and what are those to be decided by the bureacrats is something to be determined by culture and society. Ideally, devolution of power to the local helps ensure the higher levels of government focus on the most critical issues.
But that’s the rationalistic approach. Reality is more complex because politics always finds its way to play the rules rather than by the rules. So local authority uses devolved power to block larger developments, and higher levels of government sometimes have to do horse trading of issues. Regardless of the ills of the system, we need to determine if this is the way to make the best judgment for the overall society. Sure, things may benefit one segment of the population but not others; but at the very least, people can agree on a course of action suited for the society over the longer time horizon.
I think part of the lack of judgment have to do with the way philosophy is taught and viewed in our society these days. Different ideas are taught without recognising what frameworks are suitable for what kind of context and decisions. And at the same time, this coincides with the relativisation of moral values. The less we consider and cultivate broader civic virtues in society, the more it reflects in our politics less of it.
Applying judgments in the society requires that some basic principles and values be accepted broadly as the foundation of the society. If everything is subjective and relative, then politics becomes simply a beauty contest with extremely irratic outcomes.
It’s Good Friday and while in the car with my wife, the song by Elvis Presley, ‘It’s now or never’ came up and I asked her, isn’t this the tune of a hymn?
She said no, it’s an old song.
I said, it’s definitely a hymn. And I searched, realised it was ‘Down from His glory’ that shared the same melody as the Elvis Presley song, which was based on a very old Neapolitan (some kind of dialect of Italy though recognise almost as a distinct language) song, ‘O Sole Mio’ (written in 1898). The title translates to ‘My Sunshine’ and the original song was a bit of a love song that used ‘sun’ or ‘sunshine’ point to his subject of adoration.
Meanwhile, Down from His glory was written by William Booth-Clibborn in 1921. He is not to be confused with his own maternal grandfather, William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army. What I thought was interesting was how William Booth-Clibborn basically paid tribute to the source of the melody for which he composed his hymn with the lines in the chorus:
O how I love Him! How I adore Him! My breath, my sunshine, my all in all.
What a wonderful way a love song had been directed towards the praise and adoration of the Lord! In contrast, ‘It’s now or never’, despite Elvis’ musical talents and brilliance in delivering this somewhat seductive song, becomes so superficial and pale in comparison to the depth of William Booth-Clibborn’s hymn.
A year ago, I reflected on Maundy Thursday and also shared about what this word ‘maundy’ was referring to. Maundy refers to the command – and this command was to “love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34). The focus of this term was not so much on the last supper, nor the betrayal of Jesus, but on the washing of the disciples’ feet.
There is always a lot to unpack within the gospel for the record, leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in these two days. But we continue to focus on this feet-washing matter. What does it mean, why does it matter and what of this experience did the disciples take away?
On one hand, Jesus washing of the disciples’ feet is a matter of service. He was demonstrating to the disciples the level of humility that they are all called to. John the Baptist said that he was not worthy to loose/untie the sandal strap of Jesus (John 1:27) and yet here was Jesus, washing the feet of His disciples. And in John 13:14-17, Jesus clearly expects that the example he set will make a strong impression in the disciples to follow his example of love and service. The mandate to love one another then follows from there.
On the other hand, we got to peer even more deeply into the spiritual meaning of feet-washing from the perspective of those whose feet are being washed. This is perhaps thanks to Peter, who tried to ask Jesus to wash his head and hands after Jesus said that Peter had no part with Him if He didn’t wash Peter’s feet. Peter probably tries to say that all of him is with Jesus and therefore asks to be washed fully. But Jesus explains further that ‘He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean’ (John 13:10). So the feet washing is not just symbolic of the loving and serving of the one who washes. There was a separate point being brought up.
And this is the point that daily cleansing of the filth from the world (sanctification) is needed, even when we have been cleansed through salvation. There will always be influences from the world that draws us to sin and we would have our personal struggles that we are dealing with – the daily cleansing, with the Lord’s word, with prayer, mutual encouragement and service (which can come through a gentle rebuke, or holding one another accountable) will allow us to sanctify one another to the Lord.
All of these mattered to Jesus at the point before His betrayal and crucifixion (noting the way John wrote verses 2-3). This was almost the last time the disciples gathered together, and Jesus was certainly teaching them the final lessons He could share and leave with them directly before His death. There’s one common misunderstanding that I’d like to tidy up before finishing this post. The question is whether Judas’ feet were washed. Given that Jesus alluded to the fact that Judas was ‘unclean’ in John 13:10-11. The difficulty of John 13’s record is that verses 1-17 about feet washing comes first but then verses 18-30 where Jesus identifies his betrayer comes later. So there’s this impression that Jesus washed the feet of all his disciples and then subsequently Judas left.
But if you read verse 2 carefully, you realise that the elements of the flowing prose from verses 1-30 isn’t chronologically ordered. The foot washing took place immediately after supper. Whereas verses 18-38 was almost like a flashback to the times the supper when Jesus and his disciples were still eating, and then Judas went out from them and Jesus continued teaching, giving the command to love, and then predicting Peter’s denial.
I have not looked into why John wrote the way he did but I had thought that John must have been so deeply impacted by having his feet washed by Jesus and he wanted to write about that and show how Jesus lived out this ‘mandate’ while he was alive, and also how this related to the cleansing the disciples needed vis-a-vis the one they already had (salvation received in their hearts). By sharing this experience first and then unpacking the rest in the next couple of chapters, John was prefacing Jesus’ teachings with first the revelation of who His person was like from His action.
To be a Christian, the person of Jesus needs to hit us, the manner He taught with His life and not just His words. It is the consciousness of His life that enables us to cling on to His words.
For as long as I can remember, people have complained about the cost of being green when it comes to sustainability and energy use. And then gas prices spike, and suddenly green gas (eg, biomethane) becomes worthwhile. There are countries in the world like Brazil, which took a very concerted effort to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels by investing heavily into biofuels and developing a local ecosystem for it. Their energy costs becomes less correlated with what the world is going through. And during certain times, they can gain a competitive advantage.
At the same time, we might have heard that countries forced to adopt sustainability measures can end up less competitive. This is probably frequently referenced when discussing European giants subject to strict EU regulations. Other times, there are concerns about demand destruction and shrinkage of businesses when stricter environmental rules are being enforced.
Today, as we face rising energy prices due to developments in the Middle East, we are seeing countries ration fuel, express concern about fuel trade across markets, and tighten their belts to prepare for further cost increases. The question is, why are we waiting for these things to happen before responding this way? Why not tighten our belts to put more resources into renewables, focus on growing our economy through less energy-intensive approaches, and identify new areas to enable economic growth?
As an economist, I’m think it is fascinating that these price shocks are enabling us to see what will happen if regulations forces prices up in order to reduce carbon emissions. For example, we see jet fuel prices doubling and that is translating to about 20-30% rises in ticket prices on average (some routes right now are also increasing cost because of the need to make longer detours but this is not factored into our analysis); and that can lead to demand destruction of about 20-25%. So the international aviation market shrinks by almost a quarter if we were to force all international travel to use only Sustainable Aviation Fuel.
All that assumes the pricing is just 2x the traditional jet fuel cost, which is unlikely, as we try to use different feedstocks and more sophisticated tech pathways. But in reality, the SAF mandates in EU or other parts of the world isn’t quite as severe in the beginning so realistically, the demand destruction might be just a few percentage points even as we step up more blending. The question is whether the world can stomach that?
Probably without much of a hitch.
Yet we kick up a big fuss on such regulation and change. Meanwhile, we allow climate change risks to accumulate and manifest in more costly disasters down the line. Our short-termism is really killing us.
Quick note on the statistics above: most of the elasticity figures and price changes are summaries based on search on Google Gemini. While it draws upon some of the news articles and research based on SAF levies and perhaps some recent price changes, more intensive research on jet fuel pricing and air ticket prices is necessary to establish the actual correlations and elasticities.
I spent the last three years of my life almost evangelising about biomethane and more broadly, biofuels. Perhaps that is not the right word given that I am a Christian but basically I was trying to get people more aware about biomethane because of the benefits it could bring to the energy transition. It was something that was overlooked during the course of the hydrogen hype, and there had been very aggressive lobbying and campaigning against biomethane for some political and emotional reasons.
In the backdrop of the wars that are taking place in the Middle East now, the potential impacts on energy systems and markets, I want to revisit the whole biomethane story, sharing the good, and explaining some of the concerns away, while also identifying the concerns that remain, which won’t be dealt with by biomethane.
The Good
Biomethane is produced from anaerobic digestion (AD) of organic matter. It is a natural process though it can be rushed and optimised through temperature and humidity control as well as careful management of the substrate (whatever organic feedstock) put together under those conditions.
Left alone, these organic stuff would have produced carbon dioxide and methane anyways. The carbon dioxide is biogenic so it doesn’t add to global warming potential, but the methane does (and it’s 28 times more potent). So by capturing this methane, we are already reducing emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG).
But what’s even better comes when this captured methane is actually used to displace fossil fuel. And it does so in two ways. Remember I mention it the AD process produces carbon dioxide and methane? The carbon dioxide can be used in industries for making dry ice, for cleaning purposes, and even used as feedstock for some specialty chemicals. Traditionally, these carbon dioxide are from fossil sources, so getting it from biogenic sources reduces final emissions. At the same time, when biomethane is displacing the fossil methane, we further reduce final emissions when we combust it for energy or consume it for other processes.
That is quite a bit of GHG emission reduction isn’t it?
The Better
It doesn’t just stop there. The biogenic carbon dioxide can be used to produce other e-fuels including e-methane that will help increase the methane yield of the feedstock. The other chemical process pathways like gasification, methanation and all will play a role in enabling this. This provides a suitable commercial pathway for green hydrogen to help contribute to energy transition at this stage without having to refit the demand-side equipment. It helps kickstart the market without the transport logistics and infrastructure in place yet.
There’s more. AD produces a liquid slurry that is called digestate as a residue in the reactors. These are remaining organic matter that has been mainly stripped of the carbon content, but other nutrient content remains, making it suitable for use as a fertiliser. Traditionally, fertiliser is made using synthetic ingredients, including ammonium salts, featuring natural gas as a feedstock to the chemical process. By using AD digestate to make up for part of the fertiliser, we are reducing the use of fossil fertiliser and once again reducing final emissions.
As energy security and food security become a more relevant topic, we begin to see how biomethane wonderfully contributes to both the energy and food ecosystems. While we all wonder when the holdup at the Straits of Hormuz is going to end, we can start investing in the right areas that will help create the biomethane ecosystem, which can enhance our energy security and resilience, rather than squandering further resources trying to backstop our fragility.
The feedstock concerns
One of the most common issues around biomethane or biofuels in general is the challenge of having enough feedstocks. At Blunomy, I’ve conducted many feedstock studies and mapped feedstocks. The truth is that we probably won’t be able to meet all the gas demand through the biomethane that we can produce from existing feedstocks. But neither should we.
Just as we should not be relying on a single gas field or a single strait to transport all our gas. Biomethane feedstocks are naturally diversified from various sources, and policies could encourage more organic waste or residue to be properly managed upstream to produce more biomethane.
Moreover, we have not even begun exploring the possibility of growing novel crop feedstocks on marginal land that can be dedicated to energy. These crops serve to rehabilitate the soil, the land ecosystems while contributing to energy. The concern about feedstock limitations should not even feature at this moment when we have not even exploited a tiny fraction of it.
Perpetuating oil & gas interest?
Another political and emotive concern raised is that biomethane will allow the energy industry to maintain oil & gas infrastructure, further entrenching our capture by these companies. We should not perpetuate gas infrastructure and entrench ourselves in the fossil ecosystem.
More often than not, the infrastructure is regulated, and we simply need to have the right policy and governance in place to push them to serve the interests of the energy transition rather than the status quo. In many countries that have started introducing blending mandates for biomethane in the gas networks and pipelines, the largest gas consumers and even fuel suppliers have become the biggest customers for biomethane!
The methane slip concerns
So the feedstock limitation or concern around energy industry interests, isn’t something to fuss over. What we can and ought to fuss over, is the fugitive emissions, and methane leakages from continuing to use of methane for energy in the existing infrastructure. Biomethane is still methane, so while combusting it produces biogenic carbon dioxide, which we consider non-additive GHG, the release of biomethane into the atmosphere itself is still a GHG emission.
This continues to be a challenge and certainly contributes to rising GHG emissions. What we cannot always agree on is whether pushing to end the use of methane entirely is worthwhile.
There is greater consciousness of methane leakages precisely because monitoring has improved, sensing equipment is now more broadly available, and I believe the technology to upkeep the infrastructure has also improved. This is an issue to be resolved through better infrastructure, better management and better systems to ensure accountability, compliance and monitoring.
Biomethane will not resolve the issue of methane leakages, but I am not sure if this problem should be stopping us from exploring biomethane as a solution to all the other above issues that I raised. Natural gas continues to be broadly use, and the huge amount of gas infrastructure already invested into could rightly be used to serve the transition if we are willing to build this biomethane ecosystem.
I hope you’re convinced biomethane is something worth working hard to make manifest in the future we are all working for. It’s worth wondering, when we pay for energy, what are we actually buying? And whether cheap energy comes at the cost of fragility, environmental harm, lower end-use efficiency, and reduced resilience. Are we exhausting our resources, and the environment for what really matters to us?
Update (26 March, 11:18am): Initially the post mentioned methane is 12 times more potent than CO2 in global warming potential but that has been corrected to 28 times.
There is fundamentally a tension between bureaucratic structures and human judgment. The reason for such structures is to reduce the need for, and also disperse the responsibility of judgment. Often, it tries to aggregate wisdom but sometimes at the cost of creating more inertia for action.
Bureaucracy starts with good intentions: create systems and structures to minimise errors, repeat proven actions by making them a matter of policy, and prevent potential rogue players from having discretion. And potential rogue players within the system mean just about everyone. Yet it promotes conformity and compliance.
The ones who would break the rules and create wins won’t make the cut for promotion if they go too far with rule-breaking. Often, structures prevent them from going far enough to end up with wins. Those who do would probably cause loopholes to be closed up anyway.
But bureaucracy allows you to swap talents for mediocre hires, especially in highly stable environments. Take the example of infrastructure financing; the early pioneers of project finance did the hard work, used their brains to work out the risks, quantify them and set up best practices. They created financially viable structures matching the underlying needs. The ones who come after just copy their templates, sometimes even without completely understanding how the risk management or control works. They are trained more for pattern recognition and for finding market deals that work for the structures they create. This still brings value to the system, and they are rewarded for this stage of industry development. So, more people who can match the patterns will rise within the system. Those who actually think thoroughly about the risk and keep trying to innovate get stuck in the middle. Even if they stick around long enough, they do not have the chance to get their innovation pushed through the system.
New kinds of infrastructure are overlooked because they are “too hard,” when it’s easier to find what fits in the market or wait for the next deal. And so the previous innovation that succeeds cannibalises on future innovation. And the structure to scale up and deliver greater success on something that works inhibits successes of different variety.
Could it be that Singapore is running up against such an issue?
As part of an assignment for an online course, I developed an article arguing for the role of renewable fuels in the low-carbon economy of the future.I reproduce the full final draft here for my blog readers.
Climate change is a real, global catastrophe that needs urgent and immediate action. 2024 marks the first full year of warming above 1.5 deg C, determined by scientists as the climate change threshold. The Paris agreements were designed to ensure that the long-term average temperatures towards the year 2050 do not exceed this threshold. Breaching this threshold portends irreversible ecosystem damage and more dangerous climate conditions worldwide.
A huge part of climate action involves decarbonising our energy systems, which are responsible for nearly 90% of all anthropogenic carbon emissions. The rapid deployment of wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and combined with giant battery energy storage systems and pumped hydro energy storage systems, is supporting the decarbonisation of electricity grids and systems. While they are aiming to displace current fossil fuel-based systems, running on fossil coal, oil and gas, there are severe limitations and significant. Only about 20-22% of final energy consumption takes the form of electricity, which means that direct fuel consumption is still the main approach for the consumption of energy.
The solution to this conundrum is renewable fuels; first in the form of biofuels and, subsequently, a combination of biofuels and synthetic fuels produced through various chemical processes, some of which involve renewable electricity as well. Renewable fuels are not transition fuels. They will continue being carriers of energy in the future and serve as an important decarbonisation solution for industries that need to be supported and scaled up.
Renewable fuels are an essential complement to renewable electricity. Not all energy users are served by the electricity grid. The majority of the transport sector, as well as heavy industries, rely on fuels because of mobility or scale requirements. While battery technologies are catching up and have experienced a phenomenal decrease in costs, there are still operational limitations for many use cases. Long-haul heavy transport, due to its energy consumption and mobility, does not lend itself to battery systems. Therefore, even with electrical power production completely decarbonised, significant energy consumption in fuels will still need to be decarbonised. Renewable fuel represents such a solution that will enable low-carbon aviation, maritime transportation, mining and steelmaking to give a few sectors as examples. These sectors are not going away; they will play vital roles in the low-carbon economy of the future.
Renewable fuel contributes to energy resilience and security for countries and industries. Electricity cannot be stored for the long term across seasons except in pumped hydro storage, which requires specific geological features that are not present everywhere. Producing renewable fuels and storing them enables much longer-term energy storage, which can contribute to energy security in times of instability or when supply disruptions occur within the electricity system. This is because fuels are much more stable and transportable, and energy can be released on demand. For example, data centers’ backup power could be a huge battery energy storage system but without an additional source of energy, the batteries would eventually drain down to zero. Renewable fuel can be continuously supplied to the site, and power operations can be operated continuously.
There may be the view that once everything is electrified, only solar, wind and other renewable power generation sources are needed. As mentioned, renewable fuels provide an essential source of energy for mobility and several other sectors that are challenging to electrify and would still require fuel as a backup and for resilience. Moreover, renewable fuels are molecules used not only for energy but also in other chemical industries as chemical feedstocks. Dealing with climate change will require a shift away from fossil-based chemical feedstocks towards low-carbon ones which can be unlock from renewable fuels.
Recognising the role of renewable fuels in the climate transition is just the first step. The next would be to call upon policy actions, advocacy and industrial adoption to ensure the commercial viability. Renewable fuel technologies are available and established. To get to palatable levels of cost for the market, world-scale production needs to be established. That will require industries and energy users to provide unequivocal support for adoption. This is can only be possible with strong policy action to price carbon emissions, mandate blending and adoption; driving demand expansion serves also to expand production and enable economies of scale necessary to make renewable fuels a cost-effective solution for decarbonisation. The low-carbon future is not possible without renewable fuels; and renewable fuels will not enter the equation without policy action.
This year had been an interesting experiment for me, to develop more focused content around energy transition, establish thought-leadership on bioenergy, but also to consider my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ more in the way I show up in work and life.
The markets were rough, but God opened up several opportunities for me to drive my message on the role of renewable fuels in the energy transition. This year, I took part in several conferences in Singapore, Vietnam and webinars for Australian audiences. Bioenergy has achieved a level of traction that I have not seen before at a regional and global level – I am now more convinced that it would have a more promising role to play than what the electrification champions might think.
In any case, we are all trying to deal with the issue of climate change. And it appears that the economic system that has been set up is way more sticky, and stubborn when it comes to holding on to carbon-intensive economics. Part of the issue is that risk perception, as well as the way traditional finance works, has really made things harder. I reckon if the world was less financially connected, certain regions might have had worked harder on energy transition and made a bigger difference.
2025 was complex for geopolitics and certain markets have demonstrated incredible resilience even as we all battled with insane valuations around AI, which I observe as a capital misallocation (for the sake of the world) when compared to energy transition investments. Trying to drive growth in consulting in Asia Pacific remains a huge challenge and rightly so; the markets here are very different and business strategy takes a very different approach from the sort championed by Anglo-Saxon consulting houses.
The follower approach to things in Asia (sans China) however, is something that I have to continue leveraging on as I am bringing capabilities and experience from European and Australian markets into Southeast Asia. My main challenge is still to develop and tailor better offerings that would be attractive to Asian, particularly Southeast Asian clients.
On the ministry front, the work of learning from scriptures, teaching, sharing it and applying it in life is ceaseless. One epiphany I had this year concerns the fullness of Christ. We often want to take scripture, be selective about Christ’s teachings and discard what we don’t like. Paul doesn’t do that; he even recognises how he is sharing in the suffering of Christ. Even what we consider the ‘bad’ and challenging parts of life lived by Christ are worthy of emulating – not the pursuit of pain but the appreciation of the deeper meaning of what suffering is about. Our goal is towards this fullness, not just as individuals but as a church, as members of the body of Christ.
God, reality, life is so much bigger than a single mind or person can fully comprehend and contain. And so what we can receive into ourselves is really just a piece, just a glimpse. When Christ is in us, we bring that bit of who Christ is to those in the world. Including the hope we have in Him. But as a church, we can be more than one person and reflect the different dimensions and aspects of God. The diverse gifts that God grants us to bring to others is perhaps a good way to see how rich God’s blessings can be. Not just the gifts but the blessings received through the gifts of others.
And putting these together, I want to end this post with the verse from 1 Corinthians 2:9
“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”
This verse combines concepts and ideas from Isaiah 64 and Psalm 31:19. Paul also added the point about ‘entered into the heart of man’ – the idea that no one can conceive or imagine what God has prepared. It is sufficient for us to follow faithfully, to sense God’s leading and to keep growing in knowledge, in steadfastness, in faith. And the hope comes, the joy comes, and the blessings comes with it.
This Christmas, I rejoice with a few of my friends who have come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They have been working through the implications of declaring their faith and are determined to follow Jesus.
I often wonder how to share my faith with others. I question myself for being too direct or not direct enough. Or talking about tangential stuff that people would not be relating to God. I fear coming across as being irrelevant, or just preachy.
But really, God does the work. He convicts the heart and transform people through their faith in Him. Our role as believers is to simply present the gospel, share our story and let God do the work. We will invite others sometimes to our communities. And there we share our faith not just through our words but also the love, the food and the unity of our church. The same applies outside when people see how we lead our lives, how we love them and how we seek to follow Christ.
So in the new year, I want to think less about myself and think less of myself so I won’t try to be doing God’s work. I would like to just do my part.
