Speech by Minister Desmond Lee at the 5th International Conference on Energy Efficiency in Historic Buildings
Oct 7, 2024
Good morning. I’m delighted to join you at the opening of the 5th International Conference on Energy Efficiency in Historic Buildings. For those who have travelled from abroad, I wish you a very warm welcome to Singapore. For those of you dialling in from abroad, I hope that you find a way to visit the sights in Singapore.
Importance of protecting historic buildings and heritage to ensure sustainable development
As an island city-state, Singapore faces a complex challenge to meet the needs of both a city and a country within our compact land area of only 735 square kilometres.
Even as we comprehensively plan and progressively redevelop our city to meet our needs, we also want to conserve and retain much of our history. Our built heritage can tell the story of our past and reflect the diverse experiences that have shaped our nation.
Thus far, we have conserved over 7,200 buildings and structures since our conservation programme started some 35 years ago.
Ensuring a more sustainable built environment sector
We retain our historic buildings to strengthen our sense of identity and history. But given the urgency to tackle climate change, we need to find ways to make these buildings more sustainable.
Decarbonising the built environment plays a critical role in our path to net zero emissions by 2050, given that buildings account for about 20% of our emissions.
Together with the industry, our Building and Construction Authority or BCA rolled out the latest edition of the Singapore Green Building Masterplan back in 2021, to accelerate our transition to a low-carbon built environment.
This is done through our various measures to achieve our three key targets of “80-80-80 in 2030”. Firstly, we want to green 80% of our buildings by Gross Floor Area or GFA by 2030; Second, for 80% of our new developments by GFA to be Super Low Energy from 2030; and Third, to achieve an 80% improvement in energy efficiency compared to 2005 levels for best-in-class green buildings by 2030.
By retaining and adaptively reusing our historic buildings for contemporary uses, instead of demolishing them, we help support our green building efforts.
As such, BCA’s Green Mark certification scheme, which rates a building’s environmental impact and performance, recognises efforts to retain existing structures, including historic buildings, when assessing the carbon footprint of buildings.
Buildings with outstanding performance in this area are awarded the ‘Whole Life Carbon’ badge, on top of other requirements such as energy efficiency. However, just retaining buildings is not enough in our journey to net zero. We must also find ways to reduce their environmental footprint on an operational basis.
A key strategy would be to retrofit historic buildings so that they become more energy efficient. This can be a no regrets move for building owners as it reduces operating costs.
To facilitate this, we have the Green Mark Incentive Scheme which provides financial support towards energy efficient retrofits for private buildings.
We also continually review our conservation guidelines. This is to ensure that they strike a balance between providing flexibility to retrofit historic buildings with the latest energy efficient features, materials and designs on the one hand, and ensuring they still respect the historical context on the other hand.
For example, we updated our conservation guidelines in 2023 to allow greater flexibility in incorporating solar panels on conserved shophouses.
All these paved the way for building owners and built environment professionals to make our historic buildings more sustainable.
By reducing operating costs, energy efficiency retrofits also make the adaptive reuse of historic buildings more attractive. This encourages the creation of more distinctive spaces in our cities that are functional, sustainable and sensitive to the history and memory of our historic buildings.
National Gallery Singapore
Let me talk about the building we are in today, the National Gallery. It is housed across two national monuments, the former Supreme Court and City Hall.
It sensitively combines the neoclassical architectural elements of the original buildings, with contemporary elements such as an enclosed link between the buildings that opened in 2015.
Since then, the buildings have been adaptatively reused as Singapore’s largest museum.
A multi-disciplinary team including engineers, architects and conservation experts worked closely to conserve the architecture, while making the building suitable as a museum and gallery.
This includes leaving no stone unturned to ensure energy efficiency. For example, vertical green walls keep the interiors of the Gallery cool, while solar panels installed sensitively on the Gallery’s roof generate 70,000 kilowatts of clean energy annually.
141 Neil Road and the role of industry
We also need to increase the energy efficiency of smaller historic buildings as they form most of our conserved building stock. An outstanding example is the historic townhouse at 141 Neil Road.
The townhouse was built in the 1880s and is a rare survivor of this old type of a once-typical local residential terrace house. The building comprises traditional materials and natural elements such as lime plaster on walls in place of cement to keep the building naturally cooler; and open front and back yards and airwells to encourage natural cross ventilation.
With these measures, indoor daytime temperatures are up to four degrees Celsius lower than outdoors, reducing energy consumption. It serves as a reminder that our past can still offer green solutions for our future.
The impact of 141 Neil Road goes far beyond its four walls. It is home to the National University of Singapore’s Architecture Conservation Laboratory, or ArClab. It is a dynamic living classroom for students taking graduate programmes and doctoral studies in built heritage management. This includes courses on net zero retrofit in historic buildings.
ArClab has also been developing solutions to make our historic buildings more energy efficient, using 141 Neil Road as a testbed. For example, improving materials to make the distinctive V-shaped unglazed clay roof tiles on our historic shophouses and townhouses perform better thermally; and optimising the location of ventilation openings.
ArClab is a testament to the important role that institutes of higher learning have in improving the energy efficiency of historic buildings. Their educational programmes and research findings will go a long way in shaping energy efficient solutions and building capabilities, to support Singapore’s building management and conservation industry.
Conclusion
To conclude, energy efficient historic buildings serve as models of how we can achieve progress sustainably without sacrificing our past. Your support, your ideas and your expertise will be crucial in the greening of historic buildings, and our transition to a low carbon built environment.
I wish all of you a successful and fruitful conference, and I look forward to the learnings that will emerge both in Austria as well as in Singapore.