Top 5 Per Capita Carbon Emitting Countries

In 2005 when I was on exchange in the University of California Santa Barbara, I saw a large poster on the door of a professor. The poster consisted of a world map indicating the top 10 Carbon Emitters in the world. To my dismay and resigned disbelief, Singapore is one of them.

Since then, I have been trying to find the source of this information online. Even as I was working on Singapore's carbon emissions for my Environmental Issues assignment, I had difficulty finding proof.

However, today, I noticed this map on the climate change notice board outside my office.


Source: www.mapsofworld.com

Finally! Proof that Singapore IS one of the top 10 per capita carbon emitting countries in the world. In fact, we are in the top 5! This is definitely a "first" that we do not want to be proud of.


Source: Earth Policy Institute

In fact, according to the Earth Policy Institute headed by Lester Brown, Singapore was #2 in 2005. We must have gotten our act together in 2006 or that we simply increased our population. But then again, I do not know the source of the 2006 map so it's difficult to provide a fair comparison if they are calculated differently.

So how is it that I missed it before? Blame it on my lousy research skills but the interesting thing is that if you search for top carbon emitting countries, Singapore is far from the top! In fact, in terms of total, we do not produce that much. However, if you look in terms of per capita emission, meaning the amount of emission per person - taking the total emission of a country divided by its population - we immediately shoot right to the top!

Why? This is because for a very small nation, we produce a whole lot of carbon emission!


Uploaded with Skitch!
Click on image to see full size

So do not be fooled if people tell you that Singapore's carbon emission is really nothing compared to the rest of the world. Sure, it doesn't compare to China who has to deal with emissions of 1.3 billion people or the US who has 300 million eager consumers. In fact, most of Singapore's fuel consumption is from power generation (51%) and industry (31.7%). Our electricity consumption is also from industry (43%) and buildings (31%). Power generation and our oil refining industries are one of the biggest sources of carbon emission in Singapore. Singapore processes approximately 1.3 million barrels of oil in our refineries every day! Think about the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from that alone?


Uploaded with Skitch!

On the brighter note, the government is stepping up efforts to tackle Singapore's contribution to climate change through its E2PO taskforce. According to the E2PO publication, efficient power generation is one of its strategies. In fact, PowerSeraya Ltd "will commission an 800MW natural gas-fired co-generation plant by 2010 to replace its three oil-fired steam units. This... will help the company reduce its overall carbon dioxide emissions by a further 10% in addition to the 30% reduction over the last 10 years". Tuas Power and Gas Supply Pte Ltd also came up with a join project to develop the first 5MW trigeneration plant completed in October 2007 to reduce carbon emissions by 17% per annum. Another 9.2MW trigeneration facility will reduce carbon dioxide emission by 24% yearly. This is due to open in mid-2008.

I guess this might explain the fall in ranking by Singapore from 1996 to 2006! We have gone from #2 to #5. Hurray! But what happens when we build another oil refinery in the near future?



Uploaded with Skitch!

Then again, these calculations are always problematic of course. If you noticed on the 2006 map, it states that Guam is the 10th highest per capita carbon dioxide emitter in the world. Guam is a small little island territory of USA in the north pacific with a population of 180,000 people and land area no bigger than Singapore. Unfortunately, due to the US military base on the island, Guam generates and consume more energy per person than Singapore does! The smaller the population, the higher chance of having a high per capita carbon emission.

Still, it is logical because one would not expect a small nation to be producing excessive amounts of carbon. Most of the top per capita emitters are usually countries dealing with oil and associated industries with very small population. Still you don't see Brunei on that list!