Keynote Address by Minister Desmond Lee at the Singapore Green Building Council (SGBC) – Real Estate Developers Association of Singapore (REDAS) Green Real Estate Trends Conference 2021

Thursday, 5 August 2021

A very good morning to SGBC President, Ar. Tang Kok Thye, REDAS President, Mr Chia Ngiang Hong, distinguished guests, friends, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting me to join you for at the inaugural Green Real Estate Trends Conference.

I am very encouraged to see SGBC and REDAS working together to bring industry players across the Built Environment value chain to support our sustainable development agenda. SGBC has been an important partner, working closely with us to develop the latest edition of the Singapore Green Building Masterplan, and many REDAS members have also been actively involved. 

I very am confident that this Conference will foster a productive exchange of ideas and best practices that will guide us in the next lap of our green buildings journey, as we aspire to not only mainstream Super Low Energy buildings, but to also raise our best-in-class standards. 

Taking a Holistic View of Building Emissions 

Now we have come a long way since the start of our green buildings journey back in 2005, in terms of enhancing the energy efficiency of our buildings and driving down energy consumption. Today, our best-in-class buildings are over 65% more energy efficient than when we first started in 2005. We have also seen the overall energy use intensity of our commercial and institutional buildings improve by 10% over the past decade. 

Earlier this year, we launched the Singapore Green Plan 2030 to drive ambitious climate action across a wide range of sectors. And one of the key priorities under the Green Plan is to accelerate our transition to a low-carbon Built Environment. 

It is therefore important that we take a holistic view towards reducing carbon emissions across the entire life cycle of our buildings. And this means going beyond the deployment of energy-efficient technologies to place greater emphasis on sustainability further upstream, when we design and construct, as well as downstream, when we manage and maintain our buildings throughout their life cycle. To achieve this, different stakeholders across the value chain will need to work together at each stage of the design, construction and maintenance process, and pursue an integrated approach towards sustainability.  

Now this morning, I will touch on two key aspects of sustainability that we hope to partner closely with you on – Firstly, reducing embodied carbon, and secondly, partnering building users in climate action. 

Reducing Embodied Carbon 

Sustainable Construction Requirements

First, let me talk about our push to reduce embodied carbon.

We are committed to raising our environmental sustainability standards under the Singapore Green Building Masterplan. Earlier this year, we announced in Parliament that we would be raising the minimum energy performance requirements for our new buildings and existing buildings undergoing major retrofitting, to be comparable to the current Green Mark Platinum standards. These are important measures that will reduce emissions from the operations of buildings, which make up the bulk of the overall carbon footprint of our buildings.

At the same time, we also recognise the importance of reducing emissions that may not be directly generated from building operations, such as emissions upstream during the production of building materials and the construction of the building itself. These are generally smaller in scale, but still contribute to the overall carbon footprint of our buildings.

And so the adoption of sustainable construction practices is key in this regard. In particular, we have been promoting the efficient use of concrete in the building design, as well as the use of sustainable and recycled materials such as green cement and recycled concrete aggregates from demolition waste.

Going forward, we will place greater emphasis on our requirement for sustainable construction practices. Projects will need to implement a minimum number of such practices in order to meet the regulatory requirements. This will set a baseline for resource efficiency and the use of low-carbon concrete and other sustainable products in our Built Environment. These requirements will apply to applications for projects from December this year, in tandem with the raising of our minimum energy performance standards.

And for those of you who are keen to go beyond the minimum requirements, we are refreshing the Green Mark scheme to place greater emphasis on the reduction of embodied carbon. Under the revised framework of this accreditation and recognition scheme, we intend to introduce a new segment on “Whole Life Carbon” that takes a holistic view of a project’s carbon footprint over its entire life cycle. This segment incorporates the latest global standards on accounting for embodied carbon, and will push our green building leaders to aspire towards carbon neutrality. For instance, developers are encouraged to assess and reduce the embodied carbon emissions of their projects at not just the construction stage, but also while the building is in operation and at the end of the building’s lifespan. The Green Mark scheme will also continue to recognise developers who make use of sustainable building material such as mass engineered timber, and leverage Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) to minimise resource use and wastage. We are very glad that many of you have come onboard our pilot this year to trial these standards in your ongoing projects. We will incorporate your feedback from these trials before we launch the enhanced Green Mark scheme later this year.

R&D Support for Embodied Carbon Accounting & Sustainable Building Materials

Now R&D also forms an important pillar in our decarbonisation plans for the Built Environment sector.

For instance, we are collaborating with JTC, NTU, NUS and SGBC to improve our understanding of embodied carbon accounting within our local context here in Singapore. We are looking into developing a carbon evaluation tool for commonly used building materials in Singapore, which will help us to standardise the methodology for embodied carbon accounting going forward. We are also studying various strategies to reduce embodied carbon in the development of our buildings, starting with our industrial buildings.

As part of our long-term strategy to establish Singapore as a sustainable city of the future as well as a hub for urban solutions, we are committed to supporting the R&D of various green building technologies to help our companies develop niche capabilities and a competitive advantage in this field.

Under MND’s Cities of Tomorrow R&D programme, which was launched in 2017, we have supported a number of studies to develop commercially viable, sustainable building material. For example, NTU is partnering with firms like Samwoh and Bachy Soletanche Singapore to produce and test-bed green cement made from waste products such as sludge from the processing of materials and metals. This green cement is a carbon neutral product, with a wide range of environmental and civil engineering applications.

We have extended the Cities of Tomorrow R&D programme for another five years, and will be placing greater emphasis on supporting our sustainability efforts. We welcome all of you to continue to work with us, and to submit good proposals that we can help to bring to fruition.

Embodied Carbon Pledge

Ultimately, we need strong industry support and initiative from all of you, to make significant headway in our push to reduce embodied carbon.

It is in this context that I warmly welcome today’s launch of the Singapore Built Environment Embodied Carbon Pledge.

This industry-led call to action is exactly what we would like to see. It will not only support our environmental objectives, but also create demand for green products and services in the Built Environment sector, which can unlock new growth opportunities for our local firms across the value chain and create good jobs.

I am very glad to see that close to 60 organisations have signed on to the pledge thus far, including big and small players across the value chain: developers, building owners, consultants and specifiers, builders and contractors, manufacturers and solution providers. MND and a number of Government agencies have signed the pledge as well. We are fully committed to supporting this push, and I encourage more organisations to sign on to this pledge.

Partnering Building Users for Climate Action

In taking a holistic view of emissions across a building’s life cycle, we will also need to actively engage all stakeholders in the Built Environment ecosystem.

Partnering Building Users

Now in particular, we need to reach out to even more building users, as their energy consumption behaviours can have a significant impact on our ability to curb building emissions. In fact, energy consumption from building users makes up almost half of the total energy consumed in our offices and retail buildings.

To make a bigger push on this front, we have worked with SGBC to develop a programme called “Sustainability in Singapore” to build capabilities. This programme aims to train individuals on how best to engage their peers at their workplace on sustainability issues, and to implement practical solutions that can help to improve energy consumption behaviour and meet their organisation’s sustainability goals.

We have seen promising results in an earlier pilot of this programme, which involved 12 organisations and reached out to about 23,000 employees. In the case of Swissôtel Merchant Court, employees from various departments within the hotel worked together on a “treasure hunt” to identify potential areas in their day-to-day activities where energy savings could be attained. The hotel has since undertaken more than 30 initiatives to change energy consumption practices within its premises – for example, the laundry department of the hotel now operates its washing machines at full load, instead of half load as per its previous practice. Through these campaigns, participating organisations have managed to achieve tangible sustainable outcomes, including energy savings of up to 20%!

BCA and SGBC have now enhanced this programme by developing a standardised, step-by-step training curriculum, and in light of this pandemic, even taking it completely online. Participating individuals can learn how to design an effective campaign by accessing the relevant materials and checklists via the virtual platform. They can also reach out to experts for advice and coaching sessions in their own time. This makes it easier for organisations to come on board, and provides greater flexibility for them to determine the scale and the pace of their respective campaigns. I would like to encourage everyone here to join us in the next phase of this programme.

Raising Awareness Among Homebuyers

Now since the launch at the start of this year, the Singapore Green Plan has sparked many fruitful and thoughtful conversations about sustainability.

We have also begun to see a groundswell of support for more sustainable products and practices.

We want to capitalise on this momentum to bring about a fundamental mindset change among Singaporeans that everyone of us has a part to play in making our city greener and more liveable for ourselves, our children, and their children.

For instance, BCA and SGBC have been working together on a community outreach programme to raise awareness of the various merits of green buildings among our estate agents and as well as our homebuyers. We will be rolling out a digital campaign that seeks to empower homebuyers and homeowners to take action on making greener choices for their homes.

In the coming years, we expect to see increasing demand for green buildings, with more homeowners selecting homes in green buildings and homeowners adopting green solutions in their interior renovations.

So, for our developers all along the sustainability spectrum – From those just starting to pay attention to their environmental performance, to those who are leading the pack, we encourage everyone to take the necessary steps to pursue higher sustainability standards today. This will allow you to future-proof your portfolio and stay ahead of the prevailing standards, as well as capture demand from consumers who are increasingly environmentally conscious.

Conclusion

With active participation from our industry, I am confident that we can achieve the ambitious targets we have set for ourselves under the Singapore Green Building Masterplan.

This will require our stakeholders across the entire Built Environment value chain to work together, from reducing embodied carbon upstream, to improving energy consumption practices downstream. Everyone has a part to play, wherever you are in this value chain. And we hope that you will join us in this important effort. I also encourage the larger companies among us, who have more resources, more experience, to act as “queen bees” and bring more of your partners along in your sustainability journey. And in particular, our developers can make use of your unique position in the value chain to work with other stakeholders, to ensure that buildings are designed and constructed with sustainability in mind.

At the same time, we will continue to find new ways of supporting our Built Environment sector in this transformation journey. This includes building industry capability and exploring incentives to encourage the adoption of best-in-class sustainability standards. And we welcome your ideas on how best we can support the sector.

Once again, I warmly commend the efforts of both SGBC and REDAS in leaning forward actively to drive climate action across the building value chain.

We look forward to partnering together in this next lap of our green buildings journey. Thank you and have a good conference.