DPM Heng Swee Keat at the Singapore Sustainability Academy Annex Opening Ceremony

Mr Sherman Kwek, CDL Group CEO
Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,

A very good morning! Congratulations to CDL on the opening of the Singapore Sustainability Academy Annex (SSA Annex) today.

I see many familiar faces here from recent events like Go Green SG and the Youth4Climate challenge.

The growing tempo of events is a good sign that the sustainability movement here, and around the world is picking up momentum. Today’s launch is another occasion for us to gather and exchange ideas.

Taking Action to Address Climate Change

Sustainable development, especially tackling climate change, is one of the most pressing challenges facing the world today.

It is encouraging that commendable strides have been made, especially since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015.

Improvements in technology have reduced the production costs of renewable energy significantly.

Various industry sectors, including building owners and real estate developers, are developing plans to decarbonise their sectors.

Many financial institutions and investors have also adopted sustainability targets and Net-Zero transition plans.

There are also many efforts to look at nature-based solutions.

But we need to do more and act faster.

According to the latest IPCC report, the world needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by 2030, compared to 2019 levels.

This is necessary to keep global temperatures from rising above 1.5° Celsius, and to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

But global emissions last year continued to rise above 2022 levels. So we are moving in the wrong direction, including in Asia, which accounts for about half of global emissions.

Globally and in the region, we are seeing the results of climate change,with extreme weather events like heatwaves, floods and storms.

Singapore is very vulnerable to climate change. Temperatures have risen steadily over the past 40 years, and rising sea levels pose existential risks for our island nation.

It is important that we prepare ourselves for climate change early –starting with our goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

We have put in place policies such as a carbon tax and mandatory sustainability reporting. These are not always easy for companies to adopt, and we will need to help our companies adjust.

We have also launched the Singapore Green Plan 2030, as a national roadmap to guide sustainable development.

And just a few days earlier, the National Research Foundation, or NRF, launched the new CREATE Thematic Programme in Decarbonisation to help decarbonise the energy and industry sectors together with international research partners.

These plans and policies aim to help Singapore increase our resilience to climate change, and contribute to global efforts.

We hope to be a pathfinder and testbed for green solutions, and catalyse a sustainability wave in the region and beyond.

Partnerships to Accomplish our Sustainability Agenda

The agenda that I have laid out is ambitious and will require all of us to play our part.

As Sherman spoke earlier, CDL is leading by example to make sustainability an important pillar of your business ethos and strategy.

2030 and 2050 net zero targets guide your operations towards greater sustainability, and you have contributed to shaping industry practices in emerging areas such as sustainability reporting and sustainable finance.

CDL has also played an active role in sustainability education, and I was happy to join your initiatives like the CDL Green Gallery at the Botanic Gardens, and the 7th edition of the Youth4Climate Festival which was held in Bedok earlier this month.

This spirit of active citizenry is reflected in the setting up of the SSA in 2017 as a ground-up initiative and zero-energy facility dedicated to sustainability capacity building and thought leadership. I am glad that the SSA has hosted over 1,000 events and 35,000 visitors since its launch. Imagine if every visitor here brought three good ideas, you would have collected over 100,000 ideas. And if only half of those ideas are implemented, you will have at least 50,000 good actions that are taken.

So congratulations to CDL, and I hope that you will inspire more companies to follow suit.

While such individual ground-up efforts are important, we can make even greater progress by forging partnerships with like-minded partners.

The challenges of climate change are multi-faceted – from understanding climate science, to changing the behaviours and preferences of everyone.

To innovate and tackle these challenges, we will need to bring together the multiple perspectives of experts in a wide range of areas including science, technology, business, and social sciences.

The SSA fosters such partnerships by providing a convenient physical space, and curating a calendar of events, to bring these stakeholders together.

Onsite partners like the Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore (SEAS), UN Global Compact Network Singapore (GCNS), World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), CDP, GRI and Ocean Geographics add additional expertise to these engagements.

Today, as we inaugurate the new SSA Annex, let me highlight two areas of achievements by the SSA.

First, the SSA has done well to raise public awareness on sustainability and mobilise collective action, by bringing together efforts across the Public, Private and People sectors.

For example, the Second Public Consultation for the Good Samaritan Food Donation Bill was held at the SSA earlier this year, and MP Mr Louis Ng presented his draft bill to reduce food waste for public input.

Similarly, talks and workshops at the SSA have helped demystify topics such as carbon accounting and reporting, the circular economy, biodiversity, decarbonisation and climate adaptation.

So with an expanded SSA Annex, we can expect more of such initiatives from CDL and your partners!

Second, SSA has helped corporates to transform and incorporate sustainability into their business models and practices.

Companies often have a substantial impact on the environment across their industrial processes, supply chains, and product life cycles.

But not all of them have the resources or expertise to understand sustainability issues, especially our SMEs. Many companies also struggle to navigate global environmental regulations.

So, while companies should naturally compete in the business field, they will also benefit by working together to pool expertise and share their experiences on challenges that everyone is facing.

This is the spirit behind the Industry Transformation Maps or ITMs –with sustainability being a core pillar across each of the 23 ITMs in ITM 2.0.

We must help our companies and workers build up a strong foundation of sustainability knowledge and skills.

The SSA has contributed to this over the years, by hosting talks and trainings at the SSA to build capacity among our companies on green buildings, nature conservation and the adoption of sustainable energy.

These are conducted with partners like the Singapore Environment Council, SEAS, the Nature Society, the World Green Building Council and the Singapore Green Building Council.

Similarly, under the Enterprise Sustainability Programme, Enterprise Singapore works with partners like GCNS to equip companies with skills like carbon accounting and greenhouse gas management.

Such training courses not only allow companies to tap on expertise from qualified trainers, but also helps them network and learn from each other.

In turn, these new skills position our companies and workers to better seize new opportunities in a carbon-constrained world.

To seize such new opportunities, our focus in Singapore must go beyond training and capacity building, to working with companies to develop, innovate and scale up climate solutions.

These solutions can help us achieve our targets under the Singapore Green Building Masterplan, by bringing down emissions in the buildings and real estate sector, which contribute to some 20% of Singapore’s carbon emissions.

The Green Buildings Innovation Cluster Programme, or GBIC, has been an important platform to bring together different stakeholders to innovate and develop such solutions to improve the energy efficiency of our buildings.

These stakeholders include our Autonomous Universities and Research Institutions, building owners such as JTC and CDL, and building solution providers like ST Engineering and Building Systems Diagnostics (BSD).

Under our National Research Foundation RIE 2021-25, we are devoting $28 bil to our R&D efforts. One of the four big domains in our R&D efforts is on Urban Solutions and Sustainability (USS). Under our USS R&D programme, we have a range of interesting research that is ongoing in our universities as well as in the research institutes, including how AI and sustainability could be complementary.

GBIC also supports the Super Low Energy Building Smart Hub, which includes a database of technologies undergoing testing in Singapore. I had seen some examples of these low-carbon building materials and energy-efficient designs when I visited NUS’s College of Design and Engineering.

So I encourage everyone here to contribute to our innovation ecosystem, and be part of the solution.

Conclusion

Let me conclude.

We need to take urgent action to reduce global emissions, and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

We must all do our part, and work together to pool our resources and expertise, and support each other to achieve our sustainability objectives.

So as we inaugurate this new Annex, let us use this space to:

i. push the boundaries of sustainability thinking;

ii. work together to mobilise collective action;

iii. help our companies transform and embrace sustainability; and

iv. develop innovative solutions that can be scaled to serve the region and beyond.

Congratulations to Sherman and the CDL team on the launch of the Annex! Thank you.