The World is being polluted by carbon (specifically, CO2) which is a waste from burning fossil fuels. And as the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, it warms traps more heat (from the sun) and warms up the earth, and melts the polar ice, and causes sea level to rise, and extreme weather conditions.
You should know this. If you don't, your education is shockingly inadequate.
The question then is, what should we do.
Green Energy is the "easy" answer. The difficult part is, "which green energy?"
"Renewables" are another easy answer. This means solar, wind, wave, geothermal, hydro, and probably a few other exotic sources I might not have heard of.
And some of you might think out of the box, and suggest, "Nuclear".
More specifically, nuclear fusion energy, which would be orders of magnitude greater in energy output than nuclear fission (what we have now). Unfortunately, nuclear fusion is about 30 years away. It was 30 years away, 30, 50, 60 years ago. And would likely still be 30 years away in 30 years. It's a running joke among scientists. Who have no sense of humour.
At least, not human sense of humour.
But even so, fusion has a lot of problems. Who knows if it can be solved? Well, scientists have given themselves 30 years to solve all the problems. And if they have not solved it by then, I guess they will give themselves another 30 years.
Nuclear has a lot of advantages. It has the lowest carbon footprint for generating electricity. And if fusion is tamed, it would be even lower. The main problem nuclear power has is a PR problem. Which was in part due to a targeted campaign and lobbying.
BUT... the other part of Nuclear Power's bad PR are the nuclear incidents - Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima comes immediately to mind.
The other problem is that there has been no proper management of nuclear waste. Specifically, nuclear fission waste which is radioactive, and needs to be sequestered for centuries or longer.
In Singapore, we have few renewables to harness. We have no option to develop hydro-electric power. No wave, wind or geothermal power. We only have sunlight. And so it is natural to assume that we should just go solar.
Except that solar has a lot of development to go.
And because sunlight is very diffused energy, we would need a lot of open land (or space) to collect solar power. One estimate is that we would need
Solar power can be part of our energy solution. But it would be a very small part - probably about 25% of our total energy needs. But a small part is better than nothing, right?
Nuclear Fusion, if it ever comes would be cleaner, and safer. But it would take a long time to develop, and a lot of money to build.
And right now, we don't have time.
So for now, Solar?
Addendum: A video the economics of Nuclear Power. Or why it's too slow to help:
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