Singapore can seize green opportunities by positioning itself as sustainability hub

Singapore should establish itself as a carbon trading and services hub as part of a broader push to seize growth opportunities in the area of sustainability.

This was among a set of recommendations made by the Emerging Stronger Taskforce to transform the country's economy amid the pandemic, in a report released yesterday.

National Development Minister Desmond Lee, who co-chairs the task force, said Covid-19 has "crystallised" the fact that sustainability is an important and existential issue, and the growing demand for a green economy presents an opportunity for Singapore to establish itself as a first mover in this area.

Task force member Piyush Gupta, who is chief executive of DBS Group, said a new infrastructure company to bring forward the carbon idea will be announced later this week.

Carbon trading essentially treats carbon as a commodity that can be bought and sold between less and more pollutive firms.

The task force noted that demand for carbon services and trading is expected to increase as voluntary carbon markets scale up significantly to meet the goals set in the 2015 Paris Agreement to combat climate change.

By 2050, the global carbon offset market could be worth US$200 billion (S$267 billion) as demand could grow exponentially by up to 100 times - about seven to 13 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide each year.

Singapore is well positioned to be a carbon services and trading hub, given its reputation as a neutral location, trusted broker and professional services and financial hub, the task force added.

Conservation science, technology and policy expert Koh Lian Pin, a member of the Alliance for Action (AfA) on Sustainability, said it is not only important to help businesses achieve climate goals, but also to ensure transparency as firms think about investing and facilitating carbon trades as a new kind of commodity.

To that end, the AfA on Sustainability seeks to establish a carbon credits marketplace to help buyers and sellers by offering easier access and transparency.

For instance, key data could be extracted from lengthy project documents through artificial intelligence and compiled into formats that allow participants to more easily compare and assess projects' value and price them better.

At the same time, Singapore has to strengthen its food resilience through agritech, both for its own consumption and for exporting.

To encourage digital collaboration and enhance digital literacy among players in the built environment sector, the Emerging Stronger Taskforce aims to attract around 1,000 firms to join an industry coalition by 2025.

The Coalition for Built Envi-ronment Digitalisation, as it is called, is an industry digital partnership formed a year ago to equip all stakeholders with the necessary digital tools and know-how.

To date, more than 300 companies, including "power users" such as CapitaLand, City Developments and GuocoLand, bringing with them 25 projects, have committed to it.

This has generated a "pull effect" to attract other stakeholders in the value chain to join the coalition, the task force said in its report yesterday.

It noted that the built environment sector has to accelerate its adoption of digitalisation to maximise the gains afforded by digital collaboration.

PSA International group chief executive officer Tan Chong Meng, who co-chairs the task force, said the Covid-19 pandemic has thrown into the spotlight the need to increase the resilience of the sector, which comprises many different players in the ecosystem.

The one uniting force, he added, was digitalisation.

To this end, the Alliance for Action (AfA) on Digitalising Built Environment launched an industrywide Common Data Environment Data Standard to integrate complex work processes across the value chain on one platform.

One such platform that is being tapped is a cloud-based solution which allows architects, engineers, contractors and fabricators to collaborate digitally on their construction projects, thus reducing their reliance on paper-based processes. The solution, developed by local tech company Hubble, allows all stakeholders in the construction value chain to design, fabricate, manage and monitor worksites in real time, which makes for more efficient building works.

"This encourages digital collaboration and the integration of work processes across the built environment value chain... This will also help the different systems in a sector to talk to each other and the different players to work closer," said Mr Tan.

The coalition will sustain the momentum going forward, he added.

While the built environment sector has made good progress in adopting some digital processes such as Integrated Digital Delivery and Design for Manufacturing Assembly to prefabricate building components for on-site assembly, more needs to be done as most built environment firms are "minimally digitalised".

Task force member Lim Ming Yan, who is chairman of the Singapore Business Federation, noted that the digitalisation transformation for the sector started a few years ago, but the Covid-19 pandemic has added some urgency for companies to digitalise.

"This is crucial because we need projects in order for the data standards to be adopted and trialled... It will be something that will continue to evolve, refine and be improved upon as digitalisation progress," he said.

Even with diversification of its food import sources, raising local food production and stockpiling, Singapore remains vulnerable to the rising global demand for food and the uncertainty over food production due to climate change.

For instance, a fundamental problem for local production of vegetables is that indoor vertical farming for Asian leafy greens, which form the bulk of local demand for vegetables, is currently not economically viable in Singapore, noted the task force.

To combat high upfront capital and operating costs, among other challenges, existing local indoor vertical farms tend to focus on high-value crops such as kale and Western spinach instead. This leaves a supply gap in the local production of Asian leafy greens.

However, the AfA on Agritech is studying a new platform model that seeks to reduce production overheads, pool risks and build stronger links between local vegetable farms and other stakeholders. If successful, it will enable a substantial proportion of leafy greens consumed in Singapore to be produced locally by 2030.

The model could also be applied to other types of produce such as eggs and poultry, hence translating efforts to address this existential challenge into an opportunity, said the task force.

Dr Azlinda Anwar, a task force member and director of grants and intellectual property administration and coordinating director of Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, noted that the focus on agritech complements Singapore's "30 by 30" aspiration of producing 30 per cent of the nation's nutritional needs locally by 2030.