If you think that Singaporeans were motivated by fear to build up our country in early days of nationhood, think again. There wasn’t really all that much to fear because we didn’t have much to begin with. This narrative that we had no resources, we had to rely on our manpower, and our ingenuity, that’s all true but it wasn’t translating into fear for our forefathers. We had it wrong to think that Lee Kuan Yew fearmongered two generations of Singaporeans into the building up a metropolis we have today.
I believe the early Singaporeans were driven by inspiration – the ‘against all odds’ was possible because it was well worth a shot. We didn’t have much to lose; and there was everything to gain on the table. We had institutions to build, and a new identity. How exciting! And of course, we do not slacken, we are not complacent, because we were not there yet – we were limited only by our ability to envision the future and inspire our countrymen towards it.
Fast-forward today, we seem to think that we managed to achieve all that we did out of fear. We think it was ‘kiasuism’ (fear of losing) that drove us. Probably not. What was there to lose anyways; and yes we are competitive because we want to win, not because we are afraid of losing. Being afraid of losing only happens when you have won at least once. And we did win, more than once, and we begin to hold on to our victories and achievements more than our vision of the future. And in fact, this vision of the future morph, and then slipped.
Consider this press release by the Singapore government in November 1988, there seem to be a clear policy and longer term strategy underpinned by a theoretical framework of the economy. There was a deep understanding of what it means for our economy to grow and the structure by which it is expected to grow with. But without a clear sense of vision for what we want to build Singapore into, we will fall into the trap of just trying to push certain figures up indefinitely.
Ten years ago, in 2015, Ravi Menon sketched out some kind of economic vision for the future framed in a retrospective 100th year anniversary speech for Singapore in 2065. It is brilliant and perhaps reflects Ravi’s aptitude for such high level strategic thinking and visioning. If we look at the decade of performance that took place after the speech was made, I’d say things have not been kind to the world and Singapore in terms of geopolitics. That’s perhaps something Ravi did not anticipate and would not have been expected to identify as a challenge for Singapore.
In the next five decades, our nation will be confronted with lots of geopolitical challenges and turmoil in the world; our economy will require more radical thinking and transformation than the country has ever had to go through. But we can only get through it with inspiration, not fear. We can only be driven by the desire to create a future we want to live in, rather than to react to the world’s situation with the classic ‘bo-pian’ attitude that we might find more common amongst our people.
There’s been recurring opinions, stories and new reports about jobs and skills in Singapore over the past couple of months. The Job Skills insights report presented some interesting results that can be interpreted in vastly different ways, and is perhaps worth our society deliberating over.
One of the statistic in the report (page 14) that comes across as strange though not surprising, is that a non-degree holder with high skills proficiency is finding it HARDER (lower chance of getting the job) to get high-skilled jobs while a degree holder with medium to low skills proficiency can access high-skilled jobs more EASILY (higher chance of getting the job).
And on the next page, it claims that those same degree holders who were mid-low in skill proficiency had higher remuneration, and more autonomy in the jobs they got. Overall, the slant of the report seems to be promoting the need to obtain degrees and more qualifications even though it is supposed to highlight the importance of skills.
There are different opinions about what exactly is happening in Singapore. Some believe that if there simply aren’t job opportunities around, the paper chase just ends up being an arms race where jobs are just moving around from one group to another. The winner then becomes the certificate issuing organisations and schools.
Others think that there’s something absurd about hiring process and HR if they are so reliant on the degree or paper qualifications rather than real skills. Perhaps the high density market and having no short of manpower options mean that such patterns emerge where paper ‘evidence’ is used more than trying to screen for real skills. That contributes to some kind of ‘efficiency’ in the process especially when the HR function in Singapore isn’t exactly the most progressive.
There are others who believe the government’s emphasis on skills had just become a matter of incentivising more paper mills because it is easier to have a clear-cut measure of the output of their ‘skills’ policy. This is why instead of having skillsfuture churn out people who have the skills for the future (such as AI-literacy, programming skills, ability to think more strategically, understanding of carbon emissions, understanding of new energy technologies or what sustainability is really about), we simply get more aunties who could bake melon pan, or uncles who could generate good morning messages with GenAI.
I exaggerate.
But the point remains that we have a culture that is steeped in wanting to have tangible proofs of something that is genuinely intangible. And degrees or paper qualification remains a proxy for us to somehow observe skills. The point of it all is really the skills rather than the degree – so to make it about the degree seems rather superficial and short term. If anything, the big companies hiring in Singapore could come to the conclusion that since the degree holders they’re hiring have already hit the mid-low level of skills proficiency, the talent pool is really shallow and this is it, and they forgo hiring the non-degree holders who have high skill proficiencies.
Maybe that is when they start pulling out of the market. Because they are not able to access the real talent pool they need.
In long run, our paper chase actually ends up stopping ourselves.
One of the reasons I’m writing this article is that Asia Pacific is increasingly recognising the role of renewable and alternative fuels, especially biofuels. And one of the ‘measures’ of sustainability of these fuels, which may be low or zero carbon in emissions, is the carbon intensity (Scope 3). However, it often gets confused with the fuel emissions (Scope 1), and so I thought it was worth explaining clearly.
Fuel decarbonisation is so critical that it covers part of decarbonising electricity generation. Relying on a mix of intermittent renewable generation with short-duration storage in the power system is very challenging. Gas peakers are going to be integral in a system that has a significant share of wind and solar power. Yet there are concerns about carbon emissions associated with gas.
Decarbonising natural gas use and other liquid fuel-use remains a critical lever to achieve net zero by 2050. Renewable fuels, especially biofuels, enable a drop-in solution that bridges our immediate decarbonisation needs with future alternative fuel, or complete electric solutions. There are concerns however, with the sustainability of biofuels, and one of the ‘measures’ of sustainability of these fuels, is the carbon intensity of it.
The carbon intensity of the fuel refers to the lifecycle carbon emitted in the production of the fuel, usually expressed in gCO2e/MJ (reads: grammes of carbon dioxide equivalent per mega-joules). For fuel that is zero emissions, or non-reckonable carbon emissions, there are still carbon emissions associated with its production, processing and transportation before its energy is used. And so if it’s being transported from such a location, or that too much logistics were involved in its feedstock collection, those emissions gets accounted for in this carbon intensity metric. EU use thresholds for carbon intensity to determine if the fuel is ‘sustainable’ or not – on the basis that if the fuel does not achieve a level of emissions reduction, then it cannot be considered renewable.
As should be clear by now, carbon intensity is different from the concept of fuel emissions. The carbon intensity value is not reflective of the emissions of the fuel itself but more of its lifecycle, making it a Scope 3 emission as opposed to Scope 1. Take, for example, a regime where there is a carbon tax associated with fuel emissions, the carbon intensity of the fuel would not actually be considered within the calculation of the carbon tax at all – especially if the tax is designed only to apply to Scope 1 (direct emissions).
However, such a regime where a carbon tax is applied to Scope 1, should be mindful that they do not end up incentivising the use of “low-carbon fuel” that have overly high carbon intensities. Because this would defeat the purpose of trying to price the carbon emission as the direct emissions become displaced by emissions in some other parts of the fuel supply chain.
Carbon intensity is also why the International Maritime Organisation have been pushing for the Net Zero Framework that considers the ‘well-to-wake’ emissions (lifecycle emissions) instead of the ‘tank-to-wake’ (direct Scope 1) emissions. If we are focused only on the ‘tank-to-wake’ emissions, then technically, grey hydrogen or grey ammonia would have zero carbon emissions. We don’t want a case where the emissions are not reduced at the system level but just shifted from one part of the value chain to another – that’s why we care about the carbon intensity of a fuel, not just its direct emissions.
It’s probably worth pointing out I first wrote this article on linkedin and you can find it here.
I don’t really remember the last time I dealt with the topic of subsidies. There are huge transfers that takes place in the economy as a result of government interventions through a combination of taxes and subsidies. It is hard to see what the real effects are because the result is always nett of a combination of different forces and programmes. As a result, it is hard to see whether the end result was intentional or not. Often, the end result can be intentional but brought about through a combination of transfers or policies with differing stated intents.
Take for example the whole issue of fuel and energy subsidies. There are explicit and implicit subsidies and they are applied at different levels, to different parts of the value chain, captured by different parties. Of course, the result is to some extent lower cost of energy, but it is also more energy used than otherwise would be. Well, why would you favour wasting energy? Often, it’s because it can help to divert perhaps certain industrial activities that could have downstream impacts such as helping to alleviate poverty, create employment, strengthen social cohesiveness and the list goes on.
After a while, you realised that in the sphere of politics and governance, economics only holds to a certain extent. And competition often can be defined within a single dimension but actually practised over that. What this means is that if you think you’re working hard for school grades, you’d be outcompeted by someone who recognizes that his grades mean little if it is not directed towards getting to a good school or a good job. There is always a greater arena that you are actually competing within.
What this means for renewable energy is that they are not just competing with fossil fuel in terms of adoption and capital for deployment but also consumption and subsidies. Of course there is lots of subsidies going around – for example, for hydrogen. The question is whether it is worthwhile pouring subsidy into that or a more mature energy vector that has the potential to decarbonise (for example, biomethane). However, there are limitations to biomethane or bioenergy because of feedstock limitations, because of the dispersed nature of the feedstock, and the difficulties associated with deployment.
Well, there are also budget limits and land limits. It is strange how people prefer to invest in areas that have more unknowns and uncertainties rather than areas where limits are more ‘known’, but the market could still be sizable. In Australia especially, I think there is incredible upside to taking the long-term view in things because it is a market where sensibilities do tend to eventually prevail.
Originally the intent was to rant about fossil energy subsidies but look where that got me.
There was a recent piece on Eco Business about Singapore’s packaging recycling scheme being delayed and how the polluter-pays principle seems to have failed to take hold in this particular situation. It was partly because of a speech by an activist in the recent SG Climate Rally.
The principle of polluter-pays is important because it helps to internalise the social cost of pollution and allows the market to price it in correctly. The result would be that the production and eventual consumption of the relevant goods stays at the level which is socially optimum.
Product packaging is itself a massive problem where it is clear certain social costs of the waste production is not properly internalised. The fact that supply chains are such that buying a new product is cheaper than the refill version, and the fact that massive amounts of materials are used in packaging without producers having to foot the cost of disposal, seems to be an issue. But the situation is also because waste management is not properly priced. Today, in Singapore, the amount of cost you shoulder for waste disposal is based on where you live and the type of dwelling you live in rather than the amount of waste you generate. This in itself is already not exactly adhering to the polluter-pay principle.
Creating a plastic bottle or aluminum can refund scheme would also jack up the cost of the products but sometimes we forget who are actually the polluters. The ultimate polluters are still the consumers and in making our purchase decisions, if we recognise the cost to the environment and decide that accordingly, it changes the dynamics of the situation and allows the producers to ‘suffer’ the cost from the lack of demand despite the low-ish prices. But that still doesn’t produce a very reliable signal in the marketplace. And that’s why it makes sense to properly ‘tax’ the producers or the consumers somehow to get the market back in line.
As it turns out, the identification of the polluter does not matter much. What matters is that the associated product gets the pollution priced in somehow. You can charge even the shops that are stocking the products. The reason is that the cost will reverberate through the supply chain; the higher price will result in less customers buying it, sending a demand signal that reduces the orders and stocking by the shop, who will order less from their suppliers and so on. Eventually, at the default price point the producer will realise the market isn’t taking as much of the product that they are producing hence reducing their production and hopefully the pollution as well.
The tricky issue is pricing the pollution and getting a sense of how much the marginal reduction in production could reduce the pollution. This is tricky because the average pollution per product isn’t the same as the marginal pollution. And indeed you may have to curb consumption/production very drastically in order to reduce a bit of pollution if there is significant non-linearity involved. I won’t go into the mathematics here but suffice to say, there is reluctance to tinker too much with the pricing of more ‘ordinary’ consumer goods in Singapore. And it might be a shame for sustainability.
Even as we see the levellised cost of solar coming down, and increasing penetration of renewable energy, the electricity coming to us in our grids are increasing in prices. At least it seems to be so in Australia. There’s a lot of cost associated with the transmission and distribution infrastructure that needs to be recovered – partly because the growth of intermittent renewables mean that the grid infrastructure will have to be expanded.
But it is not just that; there’s also more padding required in the margins of electricity retailers because the intermittency results in even more volatile electricity prices in the wholesale market. That means that if the retailers are still providing fixed price tariffs and long contracts to customers, they will have to manage their risks by putting higher profit margins into the retail packages.
There is a huge price to pay by the society to eventually enjoy more renewable energy. If we don’t adapt to the intermittency through more adding more flexible generation leveraging on demand response and integrating EV recharging networks into the network operation optimisation (ie. Vehicle-to-Grid systems), we can only expect higher bills. We had better accelerate the transition or we’re soon losing the patience of energy consumers.
Is the whole notion of ESG disclosure a massive distraction? In 2021, Tariq Fancy of Blackrock called it a distraction for climate action. And I tend to agree because it tries to pass on the responsibility of climate action into the hands of the market, that had continually proved incapable of generating endogenous climate action. Sure, you need the market to scale solutions, and drive the expansion of some of the good things that will benefit the climate. But to think that the market can drive change just purely from the realisation of climate change as a problem is naive.
By leaving the type of climate action and the labelling of what counts as green to the market will simply generate greater confusion and inaction as we have seen from the proliferation of funds that tout sustainability or impact, or both and often still trying to pair that with financial returns, etc. The extra cost that goes into reporting, emissions accounting and massive resources around disclosure standards and all simply drives activities for the big consultancies without diverting energies towards the direction of climate action.
The issue is that greenwashing is real and pretty easy. And that can take the form of superficial disclosures that tosses buzzwords around. Yet there are corporates taking genuine action drowning in this sea of sustainability marketing and PR nonsense, being accused of greenwashing when they are trying to make a difference. If it was all going to boil down to rules, regulations and laws, then there won’t be ESG funds and non-ESG funds or government having to regulate disclosures. There won’t be accusations of greenwashing because you are either green or just illegal/non-compliant.
Regulation is of course a complex topic for another day but it has to be worked on. Regulating disclosure is unlikely to be enough.
As I mentioned about the difficulties of governing Economies and Greenspan’s disclosure on his workings on a paper in defence of his policies, The Economist recently wrote in their column about Greenspan’s recent defence of himself. Those interested might want to access his paper here.
In general, The Economist adopts a rather sarcastic tone when discussing Alan Greenspan’s role in the build up to the Subprime Mortgage Crisis in 2007. They are arguing that central bankers are around to ensure macroeconomic stability and therefore are expected to ‘play safe’ and manage the economy. That is, if reducing short-term interests rates could rein in the housing boom, that should have been applied. Even if Greenspan couldn’t have identified the bubble, and that the house prices are not related to the interest rates that central bankers could influence, the leverage growth in securitised markets might be worth managing:
By looking only at the effect of monetary policy on house prices, Messrs Bernanke and Greenspan also take too narrow a view of the potential effect of low policy rates. Several economists have argued convincingly, for instance, that low policy rates fuelled broader leverage growth in securitised markets.
Of course, having just read Dot.con and Lord of Finance, I do realise that central bankers’ attempts at interfering with specific market booms have often been ineffective or with rather disastrous results and thus choose to focus only on economic fundamentals like price inflation. Greenspan does have a point when he suggests that the central bankers are unable to deal with a global force that are changing the conditions of the economy. Very often, these efforts may create further imbalances that merely postpones a crisis.
Like I say, no one claims monetary policy is easy to conduct – it’s too often more of an art than a science.
This letter was written in early 2008 as an expression of late teenage angst at my high school. Most details have been forgotten and the context is no longer very clear to me. It reflects some of my earlier writings that were expository but driven largely by my intellectual passion in education.
It has been quite a while since something bothered me to the degree this issue of how lousy your department is did. The last time was perhaps when I was in high school, when the rather incompetent humanities department head pioneered some rather disturbing means of assessment (Major Research Papers, as they were known) – that has since been resolved after it was replaced by some more experimentally disastrous modes of assessments, for which I was not subjected to (and therefore I see no issue with that). I shall, in this little letter, outline the faults with your department and offer my suggestions to ‘correct’ these problems.
I begin with the course materials for they are at the forefront of ‘educating’ your students. If anything else, it is the only thing that comes directly in contact with the learners of your subject. The design of your lecture notes have been kindly standardized, which presents organizational ease students would gladly appreciate, but no additional readings are provided (though I would think some students also appreciates this) and it is declared that whatever students need are within the notes issued. Further readings or exploration is discouraged implicitly this way. All notes are arranged in rather logical order that introduces concepts and definitions but it appears that more emphasis is placed on memorizing the definitions than understanding the concepts (this will be elaborated in the pedagogy segment later). Diagrams are poorly annotated and large chunks of text that follows diagram are in prose but ‘bulleted’, making it confusing for student as to whether to take the entire chunk of text as a ‘point’ in the theory or mere elaborations. Blanks are often placed in wrong positions because teachers edit their lecture presentations after sending notes for printing. I therefore suggest that all blanks be scrapped so that lectures can proceed quickly and that more spaces are provided between chunks of text for notes to be written. All conceptual points should be summarized and written in good English (read: good English, not just easily misunderstood English). All diagrams should be well annotated and unnecessary repetition of diagrams removed.
Lecture time are often wasted on administrative matters that demonstrates deep distrust in the student’s desire to learn. To attend a lessons in a premier institution is to expect no time wasted on unnecessary disciplinary remarks made by teachers and that both students and lecturers are on time. There is really no need to mark attendance for lectures or waste time waiting for students who are late. To miss out a part of the lecture should be the punishment in itself – there’s no need to humiliate these students by starting the lecture late on purpose and then claim these late comers responsible for the fast pace of the lecture or worst, the incomplete-ness of the lecture. Incessant nagging about student performance during lectures are not at all appreciated and seen solely as an avenue at which the lecturer lets out his/her steam on the students, achieving practically no effect on the grades or effectiveness of lectures (often even undermining that, as well as respect for the lecturers). There is thus no need for attendance marking during lectures, or the wait for late-comers, or any ‘disciplining sessions’ – lecture time should be left purely for lecture on the subject
Technicalities with course materials and the ways lectures are carried out aside, the pedagogy of teachers reveal a profound misunderstanding in the cognitive abilities of the students as well as the processes by which one acquires academic knowledge of a subject. A social science, or any rather scientific subject, should be taught with the hope that students understand theories and concepts, as well as the implications of them. Next step would be the application of these concepts on the real world, the ability to draw evidence, real world examples to support theoretical concepts and possibly critique the inadequacies of theory. Ideally, we should be producing students capable of explaining the theories and giving examples in his/her own words.
Unfortunately, your department focused all energies on teaching ‘answers’ of potential examination questions to students since day one. There is no appreciation for the knowledge to be acquired, no consideration given to the way concepts are used in the real world (whether it is the predictive or the explanatory value) and absolutely no respect was paid to the history of the subject. Authorities of the subject are rarely introduced – I strongly believe that understanding the settings at which certain theories surrounding particular phenomena are discovered would aid one’s critique of the theory as one would then understand the timing and circumstances for which the concept served a valid explanation for some phenomena. Such ‘assessment-oriented’ approach would be seen as an indication of laziness in part of your department (if not ignorance), perhaps only interested in the results of the students rather than how interested students are in your subject. What could illustrate your distorted ideology towards teaching more than one of the lecturer’s exclamation during one of the paper review sessions: “Please, I urge you to memorize all definitions, the exact wording of each and every definition as given in your lecture notes. Do not use any definitions you picked from elsewhere or constructed yourselves because their wording are often wrong or difficult to interpret and this frustrates the markers. That means they have to waste more time on your paper and you’ll probably be given lower marks for that.”
It is perhaps why I come to realize how some of my peers who were initially curious about the subject were practically put off by it, possibly till this very day. I have no idea if this was your department’s intention but I was lucky my initial passion for the subject (built from the numerous outside readings and a steady supply of magazines on the subject) was never watered down by your horrible approach to teaching. That I went on to pursue tertiary education on this subject could only be attributed to the fact that you and your fellow colleagues have failed to practice the flawed pedagogy to its extreme for you all are still human. Of course, you might try to refute my claims by highlighting the numerous students pursuing further studies on this subject who are from our institution. That I do not deny, for it is the innate allure of the subject and perhaps the demand for knowledge in this field that have drawn this intellects towards the subject. In raising this point as a rebuttal, your department should thank God your screwed approach was not consistently applied (plausibly due to a few rebel lecturers who truly believed in the subject and loved that exploration).
I have, in the course of my education in the institution, approached tutors of the subject (ie. your colleagues) regarding some of the matters I have pointed out above but they all appeared to shrug at them. Replies offered ranged from ‘instructions by the department’ and ‘every tutor in our institution is doing it this way’ to ‘that has been the case all along and we have no problem with it’ and ‘you are a special case, I don’t think other students would think this way’. My friends have suggested I return to teach at my alma mater and clean up the mess I observed in my school days. I hope that this letter will just do that without having me to compromise my future.
