The Government has set aside $1 billion for the next five years to study large, complex national challenges such as energy and environmental sustainability.
The National Innovation Challenge was announced yesterday at the Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council’s press conference.
The challenge hopes to attract projects studying long-term solutions to major issues facing Singapore such as sustainable urban development, efficient city transportation systems or cost-efficient clean energy, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
‘These are major challenges where if we can mount a coordinated effort to tackle them, then we can marshal diverse expertise which we have built up to produce innovative and impactful solutions and make a real difference to Singapore,’ he said.
‘These would solve Singapore’s own problems, make life better for Singaporeans and also spawn new industries to exploit opportunities abroad.’
The first National Innovation Challenge will seek to gain energy resilience through increasing Singapore’s energy options, reducing carbon emissions and boosting energy efficiency.
Already, Singapore has pledged to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 16 per cent from projected business-as-usual levels by 2020, contingent on a global agreement about the greenhouse gas.
It currently has a host of schemes to fund energy research and efficiency, such as the Clean Energy Research Programme, a $50 million kitty launched in 2007 to study such technology.
But the National Innovation Challenge has much wider scale and longer-term focus, which energy researchers applauded.
Ngee Ann Polytechnic senior lecturer Tuti Mariana Lim, 42, who studies ways to improve electric vehicle batteries, noted the programme could help scientists work on significant breakthroughs as well as nascent clean-energy technologies such as algal biofuel and hydrogen which may not be immediately viable in the near term.
Singapore Polytechnic senior lecturer Jiang Fan, 52, said: ‘This is very long-term planning.’
