Research & Innovation
Research & Innovation
Research & Innovation has been a key enabler for Singapore to overcome our natural constraints. The Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment (MSE), together with our statutory boards - the National Environment Agency (NEA), PUB, Singapore’s National Water Agency, and the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) - will continue to invest in Research & Development and build Science & Technology capabilities in Singapore to address complex challenges such as climate change, environmental sustainability, water and food security.
We invite interested private sector and research partners to join us on this journey, working closely together to co-develop innovative solutions and technologies to address these complex, cross-cutting challenges.
Waste to Resource
The Closing the Waste Loop Initiative (CTWL) R&D programme is a $45 million programme under RIE2020 that supports R&D projects which address the challenges posed by increasing waste generation, scarcity of resources and land constraint for waste management. The main objectives are to promote R&D that are resource efficient, maintain high standards of public health, as well as contribute to meeting the target in the Zero Waste Masterplan to achieve an overall reduction of waste to landfill by 30% by 2030, and enable Singapore to become a Zero Waste Nation.
The WtE programme aims to enhance energy and resource recovery from Singapore’s municipal solid waste by building up Singapore’s research capabilities in these areas, and establishing a WtE research facility to provide a platform to enable the transition of research outcomes to commercial application and deployment. The programme targets to increase the electrical efficiency of Singapore’s WtE processes from about 23% currently to 27% post 2020 and 30% post 2030.
Environmental Services companies can tap on the funding support under the Environmental Services Industry Transformation Map (ES ITM) or adoption of tools, equipment and technology to enhance productivity and service delivery. These funding support include the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) administered by NEA and financial assistance from Enterprise Singapore (ESG).
The National Innovation Challenges are periodic open innovation calls to academia and industry to work together with government agencies to develop practical, impactful solutions to large and complex problems facing Singapore. By bringing together industry partners, government agencies, and innovators to work on the identified challenges, these calls seek to harness Singapore’s vast research and innovation capabilities to develop innovative technological solutions to sustain our long-term growth and resilience. NEA and Enterprise Singapore (ESG) have jointly launched innovation calls and request for proposals for industry solutions as part of the NIC.
A regulatory sandbox under the Environmental Services Industry Transformation Map (ES ITM) has been established by NEA to create an environment for experimentation where regulations can be relaxed within parameters, to promote innovation in Singapore’s environmental services industry. It also allows the regulator to assess the impact of the new technology/solution before deciding on the appropriate regulatory adjustments. Interested parties can apply to enter the Sandbox to experiment innovative environmental services related technologies and solutions in a controlled environment within a fixed duration, without compromising environmental, public health and safety aspects.
Under the Innovating and Curating Better Automation and Technologies for Environmental Services (INCUBATE) Programme, NEA has partnered with technology and service providers as well as premise owners to collaborate on ways to address challenges they face in the area of environmental services, including the conduct of trials for technologies and innovations and sharing the results and learning of such trials.
NEA and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) co-funded the development of a WTE Research Facility (WTERF) with high-temperature slagging gasification as its base technology. This WTERF takes all the municipal solid waste from NTU as its feedstock, and provides a “plug-and-play” platform to enable research translation, test-bedding and demonstration projects to be undertaken by the industry and research community.
Resilient & Sustainable Water
Towards our mission to supply good water, reclaim used water and tame stormwater, PUB lends its support to various water-related research and development in the region and globally. PUB’s research and development activities not only encourage new ideas and technology but also position Singapore as one of the world leaders in water resource research and management strategies.
The Competitive Funding for Water Research is a funding scheme that funds basic/applied R&D projects that possess potential in developing innovative and novel solutions for the water industry. It is part of Singapore’s Research, Innovation, and Enterprise (RIE) Plan.
The PUB Global Innovation Challenge seeks to accelerate the discovery and adoption of digital solutions and smart technologies to improve operational excellence and meet future needs. Companies, researchers, and innovators from around the world are welcome to propose solutions to PUB’s challenges, with selected applicants given the opportunity to validate and deploy their ideas.
The Living Lab (Water) Scheme aims to accelerate the commercialization of new promising water technologies by incentivizing their early adoption in Singapore. It is part of Singapore’s Research, Innovation, and Enterprise (RIE) Plan.
The Industrial Water Solutions Demonstration Fund (IWSDF) is a component of the Water Efficiency Fund that is available to support high-impact and innovative projects to treat and reclaim fresh water from industrial used water for process reuse. Companies with monthly water consumption of more than 10,000m3 are invited to submit proposals for projects that yield at least 5% reduction in water consumption through reuse.
PUB fosters the growth of water innovations by facilitating the testing of products, processes, systems, and services. PUB offers industrial test-bedding sites to the public and private sector, and has the operational know-how to facilitate the projects from conceptualization to completion.
Climate Science & Adaptation
The Climate Science Research Programme Office (CSRPO), under the Centre for Climate Research Singapore (CCRS), has launched the National Sea Level Programme (NSLP). The NSLP aims to coordinate relevant climate research in Singapore and address key knowledge gaps in the understanding and modelling of the physical mechanisms of sea level rise and variability, with specific focus on Singapore and the wider South East Asia region.
Through Local Research Collaborations and International Research Collaborations, partnerships are established to develop a deeper understanding of weather and climate processes and to enhance weather prediction and climate science capabilities in the region.
Food Security, Safety & Resilience
The Singapore Food Story R&D programme is a $144 million programme that supports Singapore’s drive to strengthen its food security and achieve its “30 by 30” goal. The programme facilitates the development and use of productive, climate-resilient, innovative, and sustainable technologies for agriculture and aquaculture, as well as new biotech-based foods and ingredients, underpinned by a robust future-ready food safety system.
Environmental Public Health
The Environmental Robotics Programme is a $15 million programme that aims to develop robotic solutions for the environmental services industry, in the work areas of Public Cleaning, Waste Management and Inspection, Monitoring and Sampling. The programme seeks to enable productivity gains, maintain a sustainable workforce and enhance current capabilities while also enabling new ones. It comes under the broader umbrella of Singapore’s National Robotics Programme.
NEA offers a number of Innovation calls for R&D, including the Innovation Call for Pollution Monitoring Solutions under the Government-Partnership Capability Transformation (Gov-PACT) initiative to address pollution monitoring challenges faced by Singapore, and the Innovation Call for Rat Tracking Solutions to develop more effective strategies to tackle rat issues in Singapore.
Environmental Services companies can tap on the funding support under the Environmental Services Industry Transformation Map (ES ITM) or adoption of tools, equipment and technology to enhance productivity and service delivery. These funding support include the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) administered by NEA and financial assistance from Enterprise Singapore (ESG).
The National Innovation Challenges are periodic open innovation calls to academia and industry to work together with government agencies to develop practical, impactful solutions to large and complex problems facing Singapore. By bringing together industry partners, government agencies, and innovators to work on the identified challenges, these calls seek to harness Singapore’s vast research and innovation capabilities to develop innovative technological solutions to sustain our long-term growth and resilience. NEA and Enterprise Singapore (ESG) have jointly launched innovation calls and request for proposals for industry solutions as part of the NIC.
A regulatory sandbox under the Environmental Services Industry Transformation Map (ES ITM) has been established by NEA to create an environment for experimentation where regulations can be relaxed within parameters, to promote innovation in Singapore’s environmental services industry. It also allows the regulator to assess the impact of the new technology/solution before deciding on the appropriate regulatory adjustments. Interested parties can apply to enter the Sandbox to experiment innovative environmental services related technologies and solutions in a controlled environment within a fixed duration, without compromising environmental, public health and safety aspects.
Under the Innovating and Curating Better Automation and Technologies for Environmental Services (INCUBATE) Programme, NEA has partnered with technology and service providers as well as premise owners to collaborate on ways to address challenges they face in the area of environmental services, including the conduct of trials for technologies and innovations and sharing the results and learning of such trials.