Cover Story: This month’s cover story takes us to Singapore. And a very particular reason why I chose this as the leading story is the fact that urban transport, especially intra-city commute and travel is a major factor when we account for global GHG emissions. A point I’ve explained in my previous articles correlating to the role courier/cargo companies can play. Singapore Post (Sing Post) has begun trials of e-scooters and e-vans as part of its plans for a phased out delivery fleet switch from ICE to all electric. In partnership with BYD, the T-3 electric vans are part of a five year plan (initially) to replace the existing 140 petrol driven delivery vans. Similarly, the IONA Rap three wheeler e-scooters are on road trials to eventually replace the 700 strong existing ICE motorcycles plus scooters delivery fleet. The best part about this entire project is the comprehensive study which forms the basis of the entire initiative. From the choice of e-vans/e-scooters, to comparative analysis based on drivetrains/powertrains, local factors and Sing Posts operational routes/map, I for one would highly recommend this to other national governments as a reference case study. With overall emissions based target policy set for this decade, 2026 will mark a major shift either partially or fully as Sing Post makes the switch.
Global News Desk: Canada is all geared up to be the latest entry to the list of countries beginning to invest in and lay out infrastructure plus policy plans for local EV manufacturing industry. This is indeed pleasing to hear, something I’ve advocated for in my articles not just in theory but with qualified data from around the world. The federal government through one of its agencies Fed Dev Ontario has set aside $5 million which will be directed to APMA (Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association). And they in turn will now look into various design models covering the entire drivetrain/powertrain , which of course passing through various pre-qualification stages will be scaled up for mass manufacturing. Project Arrow, made in and by Canada.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in its latest report officially declared July-2021 to be the hottest month ever. All records broken, since recording such data began. Both land and sea/ocean surface temperatures sent mercury to rather unwanted levels. Just to give all my readers an idea, the land surface temperature for July-2021 stood at 1.54 degrees C above the recorded global average thus far. And instrument record keeping dates back to 1880. This further corroborates the IPCC-2021(Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change) report, published recently. And I highly recommend chapter II & IV respectively of that report to everybody, just browse through it. If I were to put it in one sentence, it’s quite obvious that the earth’s inner/lower atmosphere has been breached, to a significant degree, thus leading to a higher probability of exposure to extreme weather events due to the imbalance which is a consequence. In all five data modelling based scenarios in this report, the 1.5 degrees C barrier is seemingly an elusive target but we can and must make the next 0.5 degrees C “dance to strings held by us’ and not the other way round.
Last but not least, Asian Development Bank is working on a pioneering project with Turkmenistan which aims to make an existing gas-fired power plant transition to a hybrid system, whereby the steam to the turbines can be fed from both natural gas and solar-thermal/CSP. Apart from the initiative, developing countries can and should access such avenues of green financing since it caters to both the financial and technical assistance & support needed.
With approximately 114Gwh of lithium-ion batteries installed/which ended up in electric vehicles registered and sold in the first half of 2021, a perfect note to sign off.
