Singapore's national climate targets: the 2035 NDC and net zero by 2050

What an NDC is

A Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) is the emissions commitment each country submits under the Paris Agreement, the 2015 treaty in which countries agreed to limit global warming. NDCs are updated every five years and are supposed to get more ambitious each time.

Singapore's targets

"MtCO2e" means million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

The Second NDC covers energy, industrial processes and product use, agriculture, waste, and land use, land-use change and forestry.

Why the range matters. The lower bound of 45 MtCO2e keeps Singapore on a linear path from its 2030 peak to net zero in 2050. The upper bound of 50 MtCO2e does not - it would require steeper cuts later. The range is therefore a statement about pace rather than destination, and the difference between the two numbers is where the argument about ambition sits.

Net zero by 2050, and how it hardened

The net zero target is set out in Singapore's Long-Term Low-Emissions Development Strategy (LEDS), published in 2020. The original formulation was to reach net zero "as soon as viable in the second half of the century" - a deliberately loose phrase that could have meant 2099.

An addendum in November 2022 replaced that with a firm date: 2050. That change is more significant than it looks. A dated target can be measured against, planned around, and missed publicly. An undated aspiration cannot.

Singapore has also committed to phase out unabated coal power by 2050. "Unabated" means burning coal without capturing the resulting emissions.

The caveats Singapore itself attaches

The National Climate Change Secretariat is unusually explicit that these targets are hard, and about why:

• Singapore is a resource-constrained, alternative-energy-disadvantaged city-state. There is little land for solar, no hydropower, no geothermal resource and no meaningful wind.
• Achievement depends on international cooperation, including Article 6 carbon markets and regional power grids such as the ASEAN Power Grid.
• It also depends on low-carbon technologies maturing, particularly hydrogen and carbon capture, neither of which is proven at the scale required.

This is worth taking at face value rather than reading as hedging. It is the honest reason why Singapore's climate policy leans so heavily on carbon pricing, imported electricity, international carbon credits and energy efficiency: the domestic renewable options are genuinely limited.

How the targets connect to company-level obligations

The national targets are the reason the rest of this site exists:

• The carbon tax and its rising trajectory are the main domestic pricing instrument for closing the gap.
• The International Carbon Credit framework and government purchases of credits are how part of the gap is closed abroad, under Article 6.
• Mandatory climate reporting for listed and large companies is how progress is measured and how capital is steered.
• The Singapore Green Plan 2030 translates the targets into sector-level milestones.

A company reading its own obligations in isolation will find them arbitrary. Read against a 45 to 50 MtCO2e target for 2035, they form a coherent programme.

Where to check the official text

Singapore's submissions are held in the UNFCCC's NDC Registry at https://unfccc.int/NDCREG, and NCCS maintains the national overview page linked below.