DPM Heng Swee Keat at the EuroCham Sustainability Awards 2023

Your Excellency Iwona Piorko, Ambassador of the European Union to Singapore, 
Mr Jens Rubbert President of EuroCham,
Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen, 

Good evening. It is a pleasure to join you today at the EuroCham Sustainability Awards 2023 to celebrate companies and organisations in Singapore for their outstanding sustainability efforts.

The EU-Singapore Story 

For more than 20 years, EuroCham has helped to promote closer and stronger business, trade and investment linkages between the EU and Singapore as well as between the EU and ASEAN.

This underscores the EU’s like-mindedness with Singapore on the importance of an open, inter-connected and integrated global economic system.

Indeed, European companies and individuals have played a constructive role in Singapore’s development story.

Mr Rubbert earlier mentioned Mr Albert Winsemius. Mr Winsemius was one such individual from Europe who played an important role in the early stages of our economic development.

In our early years of independence, European companies like Siemens and Safran made significant investments into Singapore, creating many meaningful jobs, imparting skills and knowledge, and uplifting the lives and livelihoods of our people.

In fact, we used to have three training centres in Singapore – the German-Singapore Training Institute, the French-Singapore Training Institute and the Japan-Singapore Training Institute.

These three institutes later merged to form the Nanyang Polytechnic.

Today, the EU and Singapore have established a wide-ranging partnership spanning culture, science, education and research, defence, and healthcare, among others.

Singapore is the EU’s largest trade and investment partner in ASEAN. Ambassador Piorko earlier mentioned the EU’s extensive links with other countries in ASEAN. Many EU businesses based in Singapore also tap on us as a base to access the ASEAN market.

The EU is Singapore’s 5th largest goods trading partner and more than 12,000 European companies have established a presence here.

Many of these companies are pursuing cutting-edge advances in areas like aviation and electronics, including in collaboration with our universities and research institutes, that will help both Singapore and the EU build more resilient, vibrant, and future-ready economies.

The EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which entered into force in 2019, is the first such Free Trade Agreement between the EU and an ASEAN country. Building on our strong economic links, the EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement is helping to unlock opportunities for collaboration in new and emerging areas, positioning both the EU and Singapore well to tackle common challenges together. 

The Green Chapter

Foremost among these shared challenges is climate change.

A changing climate knows no boundaries. Its impacts are felt globally, transcending geographical boundaries.

Europe saw one of its warmest summers in 2023, with record temperatures of 48.8 degrees Celsius in some areas.

Singapore, too, experienced its highest recorded temperature of 37 degrees Celsius in May this year.

Global warming intensifies extreme weather events and could trigger broader social and economic disruptions.

It also affects our biodiversity system in a very significant way and affects our food resilience. So climate action should be more than just a priority – rather, it is essential for our survival.

As signatories to the UN Paris Agreement, both Singapore and the EU are strongly committed to tackling climate change.

The EU was one of the co-leads for the Global Methane Pledge, which was launched to catalyse action to reduce methane emissions. Singapore is among the more than 110 countries to have signed the Pledge.

Singapore also co-facilitated ministerial consultations on Article 6 of the Paris Agreement at COP-26, which saw the finalisation of the rule book on carbon credits and carbon markets.

This reflects our commitment to enabling high integrity carbon markets that would help unlock more mitigation action and contribute to accelerating progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.

Within the EU, as Ambassador Piorko mentioned earlier, the European Green Deal details your ambitious plans to make the European continent, the first continent, carbon-neutral by 2050.

On our part, Singapore has also committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, and for the public sector by 2045.

Our Singapore Green Plan 2030 charts ambitious and concrete targets to advance our national agenda on sustainable development. We are making significant progress in accelerating the green transition throughout our society and economy.

In 2019, Singapore became the first country in Southeast Asia to implement a carbon tax.

We are raising this progressively in stages until 2030, to strengthen the price signal and impetus for businesses and individuals to reduce their carbon footprint.

We are undertaking major research on urban solutions and sustainability – how do we make a city that is densely populated smart, green and sustainable? And this covers a whole range of work on the energy transition, on the use of renewables, recycling, and reducing waste.

Our carbon pricing trajectory will enhance the business case to invest in low-carbon solutions, helping businesses remain competitive in a low-carbon future.

The revenue collected from the carbon tax will be used to support decarbonisation efforts and the transition to a low-carbon economy, as well as cushion the impact on businesses and consumers.

We have also boosted the adoption of electric vehicles and accelerated the transition of the use of cleaner and lower-carbon fuels for our maritime and aviation sectors.

In addition, we have granted conditional approvals to import around 4 gigawatts of low-carbon electricity by 2035 to decarbonise our power sector.

And we are also working with our regional neighbours to develop an ASEAN Power Grid to facilitate regional decarbonisation and improve energy security.

The EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement gives Singapore and the EU a solid framework to advance our joint sustainability and development agenda.

It is a high standard and comprehensive agreement, which would eliminate tariffs on all products traded between us by end-2024. This includes tariffs on important green goods and services.

Under the agreement, both sides have also committed to resolve non-tariff barriers, including for renewable energy generation.

In addition, many innovative green technologies are valuable forms of intellectual property and soft assets that would be well protected under the EU- Singapore Free Trade Agreement.

Alongside cooperation with the EU, Singapore has also embarked on several joint green initiatives with our European partners.

In 2022, Singapore launched a Digital and Green Partnership with France and a Framework for Sustainability and Innovation with Germany. These initiatives provide a structured platform for cooperation on digital and green priorities including sustainable heritage conservation and green technologies.

As Ambassador Piorko earlier mentioned, the green and digital transformations are deeply interlinked. To enable zero or near-zero greenhouse gas emission shipping, Singapore’s Maritime and Port Authority has worked with the Port of Rotterdam and 22 value-chain stakeholders to operationalise the Singapore- Rotterdam Green and Digital Shipping Corridor.

I am confident that our robust and wide-ranging green economy collaboration, including between our regions, will continue to grow from strength to strength.

The Role of Businesses 

Let me now touch on the role of businesses. Singapore and European businesses can seize new growth opportunities together, while contributing to the two regions’ sustainability goals.

Southeast Asia is home to some of the world’s fastest growing cities, with a large youth population and a rapidly growing middle class.

There is potential to pursue emissions reduction while generating new growth opportunities as we shift to a greener economy.

To unlock this potential, all stakeholders including government and businesses need to make a concerted effort.

The private sector too plays a pivotal role in achieving the region’s sustainability goals, including through uplifting Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) standards in the way you trade, invest and do business.

Let me highlight three promising areas where the private sector, including European businesses, can help catalyse decarbonisation at scale for the region.

First, carbon markets.

Singapore is leveraging our strengths as an international financial centre and business hub to establish ourselves as a vibrant carbon services and trading hub.

We welcome companies across the carbon market value chain to set up in Singapore, and use Singapore as a base to expand into the region which has huge potential for mitigation activities particularly in nature-based solutions.

Today, Singapore is home to more than 100 companies that tap on Singapore as a regional gateway to provide carbon services in Asia.

This includes key players such as Climate Action Data Trust, a global platform aimed at enhancing the transparency of carbon markets by integrating data from project registries.

Second, low carbon solutions.

We are investing in low-carbon technologies such as low-carbon hydrogen and carbon capture utilisation and storage, which can enable our transition to a net zero future.

The energy transition, in particular, is a prime area for new scientific and technological breakthroughs. R&D, including into low-carbon solutions and new digital solutions, can help us lower our carbon footprint and raise energy efficiencies.

Given the scale of the task before us, global collaborations across borders and regions will be essential to accelerate our progress in building a greener world.

Third, green and transition finance.

As an international financial centre, Singapore plays an important role in supporting Asia’s transition to a green and net-zero future.

In April this year, the Monetary Authority of Singapore launched a Finance for Net Zero (FiNZ) Action Plan laying out strategies to mobilise financing to catalyse Asia’s net zero transition and decarbonisation activities in Singapore and the region.

We are working with various stakeholders to develop and scale Asia-tailored transition finance solutions and markets to capture transition opportunities, including scaling blended finance for transition projects with public, private and philanthropic partnerships.

As part of this, MAS is working with partners to develop regional taxonomies that can provide clarity to the market on what activities can be considered green or transition, thereby helping to unlock and scale up green and transition finance.

We are keen to work with European partners in developing sustainability-related capabilities in Singapore and growing the range of sustainable finance solutions to serve clients in Asia.

As a regional business hub, Singapore can be a base for European businesses to connect with partners across Southeast Asia and the larger Asia-Pacific region.

We can also serve as a living laboratory for innovative European businesses to test-bed novel solutions that can be scaled up regionally for wider impact.

In June 2023, Schneider Electric opened a Sustainability Competency Centre (SCC) for Asia in Singapore, in partnership with the Singapore Economic Development Board.

The SCC would anchor Singapore as a global hub for sustainability leadership development and to develop and deliver sustainability services and solutions for the region.

Singapore is also pioneering the development of new rules and standards through Green Economy Agreements.

This can allow companies based in Singapore to connect with green economy markets overseas.

Conclusion

The EuroCham Sustainability Awards 2023 is a testament to the strong and growing partnership between Europe and Singapore. It also reflects the invaluable commitment from the private sector towards achieving sustainability goals.

In recognising companies and organisations for their accomplishments in social sustainability, sustainable investments and supply chains, and business innovations, EuroCham is helping to steer the interest of industry and partners onto a path towards greater sustainability.

Let me also commend the award finalists this evening for being good role models of how enterprises and organisations can support efforts toward a greener, more sustainable future. I am sure your work will be an inspiration for others , across sectors and domains, and also an inspiration to many young people to follow in your footsteps.

Let us continue working together to identify new opportunities to create inclusive and sustainable growth for our businesses and peoples. Congratulations to all our finalists I wish everyone a wonderful evening ahead. 

Thank you.