NEA’s direct emissions fall 20% on scale-down of Tuas Incineration Plant operations
Wong Pei Ting
THE National Environment Agency (NEA) , the government agency overseeing Singapore’s waste incineration, has reported a 20 per cent drop in its direct carbon emissions – also known as Scope 1 emissions – for its 2021 fiscal year ended Mar 31.
The savings could be attributed to the scaling down of operations at the 1986-built Tuas Incineration Plant, NEA said as it released its latest integrated sustainability report on Wednesday (Sep 28).
Tuas Incineration Plant ceased operations in February, following the commissioning of a new plant called TuasOne from December 2021.
TuasOne, which is equipped to incinerate 3,600 tonnes of waste, is designed with higher heat recovery from waste incineration and higher electrical power generation efficiency. The waste-to-energy plant can generate 120 MW of electricity a day, sufficient to power about 240,000 4-room Housing Board flats.
Heat recovered from the waste incineration process at Tuas Incineration Plant was used to generate approximately 6,400,000 MWh of electricity – an amount that can power some 40,000 4-room HDB flats – over its 36 years of operations.
Waste incineration contributed 629,170 tonnes of carbon dioxide to NEA’s Scope 1 emissions in FY2021, down 20.5 per cent from 791,434 tonnes in FY2020.
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While the improvements were substantial, waste and water contributed just 0.6 per cent to Singapore’s primary emissions and 0.9 per cent to secondary emissions in 2019 – which means the country has to tap other means to decarbonise and reach its net-zero goals.
Chiefly, Singapore has to address primary emissions generated by industry, power and transport, which takes up 45.1 per cent, 39.2 per cent and 13.8 per cent chunks of its emissions profile, 2019 figures released by the National Climate Change Secretariat showed.
Overall, Scope 1 emissions reported by NEA fell 20.4 per cent to 635,482 tonnes, from 798,077 tonnes a year agoL The levels of its Scope 2 and 3 emissions – covering indirect carbon emissions associated with the purchase of electricity and business travel – stayed largely unchanged.
Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and town gas used at Choa Chu Kang Crematorium and Mandai Crematorium, and NEA-owned vehicles account for the rest of NEA’s Scope 1 emissions. Emissions from LPG and town gas fell 12 per cent to 2,316 tonnes, while emissions from the NEA vehicles stayed stable, clocking in at 3,996 tonnes this FY.
In another segment addressing the organisation’s electricity and water use, NEA reported a substantial 17.4 per cent drop in electricity consumed at its installations – which covers Semakau Landfill, incineration plants and crematoriums. The decline was also due to the decommissioning of Tuas Incineration Plant.
The installations consumed 129,081 MWh of electricity in FY2021, compared to 156,258 MWh a year ago, when electricity consumed at NEA offices rose 3.4 per cent to 7,196 MWh.
However, consumption of potable water at NEA’s installations rose 16.3 per cent in FY2021 to 72.3 million litres. NEA said in its report this was partly due to extensive washing of buildings prior to repair and redecoration works at Tuas Marine Transfer Station, as well as increased washing and cleaning at Choa Chu Kang Columbarium caused by algae growth. There was also an instance of water leakage from a burst underground water pipeline, although this was repaired “promptly”, the report noted.
Other than the Public Utilities Board’s (PUB) potable water, NEA’s installations uses 2 alternative water sources – these are rainwater and NEWater, which is wastewater treated by the PUB.
NEA disclosed that its incineration plants consumed 457.5 million litres of NEWater in FY2021, for purposes such as general cleaning, cooling hot ash, suppressing dust and producing demineralised water for boiler usage.
This figure, which is not counted towards the amount of PUB water consumed at NEA installations, dwarves the amount of potable water consumed by all of NEA’s installations and offices combined, and is also 43.3 per cent higher than the amount of NEWater consumed by the incineration plants in FY2020. NEA did not explain the increase in NEWater required of the plants.
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