Green economy to add 18,000 jobs and $3.4b
Tuesday, April 28, 2009

SINGAPORE – Money does not grow on trees but the Singapore government hopes a green economy will pay off by creating 18,000 more jobs and adding $3.4 billion to the Republic’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2015.

Yesterday, the Government released its sustainable-development blueprint which projects that environment and water technologies and clean energy solutions will each contribute $1.7 billion to GDP in the next six years.

Of these, 11,000 jobs will come from environment and water technologies, such as water-treatment plants, while 7,000 will come from the clean energy industry, such as solar-cell plants or biofuels.

To grow the clean technology – or “cleantech” – sector, a $680 million fund has been set aside for research and development (R&D) and manpower training.

And January’s Budget pledged an additional $1 billion for sustainable development over the next five years.

Though this figure is a small percentage of Singapore’s $257.4 billion GDP last year, Minister for National Development Mah Bow Tan said: “We are not looking at headline-grabbing numbers...We are looking at something that is do-able in the Singapore context, that is practical, that will give us results.”

One strategy is to develop Singapore as a “living laboratory” for companies to test-bed technologies here.

A 55-hectare cleantech park – about 25 per cent larger than Beijing’s Tiananmen Square – will provide companies with a ready testing ground.

The first phase of the park will be ready at Jalan Bahar, near Nanyang Technological University, by 2011, and will be completed over the next 20 years.

The park will set standards for users in carbon emissions, energy use, and water and waste management, said the Economic Development Board (EDB), which is developing the facility with JTC Corporation.