Speech by MOS Faishal at the Singapore Green Building Council Gala Dinner

Sep 15, 2023

Good evening.

I’m delighted to join you this evening for the Singapore Green Building Council Gala Dinner. Before I begin, I would like to offer my heartfelt gratitude to the Singapore Green Building Council. Please join me in giving them a big round of applause.

The SGBC has been a close partner in our efforts to accelerate the decarbonisation of the Buildings sector. You have been pivotal in driving environmental sustainability through many efforts –  First, offering certification for green building-related products and services to help industry players opt for greener options; Second, creating opportunities for collaboration on green building design, practices and technologies both locally and internationally; Third, profiling Singapore as a sustainable hub in the tropics through your public education and outreach efforts. 

Most significantly, you have been instrumental in shaping the latest edition of the Singapore Green Building Masterplan, which brought together over 5,000 individuals across the Built Environment value chain as well as the wider community to share their ideas and aspirations for the future of green buildings.

Greening our buildings

The Singapore Green Building Masterplan (or SGBMP) is an important guiding document for our sector. It sets out our vision for a greener Built Environment, and reflects our collective commitment to achieving higher sustainability standards. It is also the Buildings sector’s contribution to the Energy Reset pillar of the Singapore Green Plan 2030.

With buildings accounting for over 20 percent of our carbon emissions and more than a third of electricity consumption, our efforts to decarbonise the Buildings sector will be vital for Singapore to meet our target of peaking our emissions before 2030, and achieving net zero by 2050.

To meet these public commitments, the SGBMP sets out three ambitious targets, or “80-80-80 in 2030”. Through the partnership and efforts of building owners, professionals and industry stakeholders with the Government, we have made encouraging progress.

On our first target to green 80% of buildings by Gross Floor Area (or GFA) by 2030, we have greened close to 55% of our buildings through various efforts such as the HDB Green Towns Programme and more. Crossing the 50% mark is a worthy milestone to celebrate, but we must press on. 

One important group of buildings which we need to rapidly decarbonise are those that are highly inefficient, and hence very energy intensive. This could be because they were not built with sustainability in mind, or have not undergone timely retrofits to upgrade their building systems. We are taking steps to address this by introducing the Mandatory Energy Improvement regime, or MEI for short, by the end of next year. The MEI regime will require owners of buildings with poor energy performance to conduct an energy audit to identify where energy consumption can be reduced, and implement energy efficiency improvement measures to improve their energy performance.

On our second target for 80% of new developments to meet Super Low Energy (or SLE) standards from 2030, we have made good progress on this.  Around 1 in 5 new buildings have achieved this in the past year, up from just 7% last year.

The Government is taking the lead to make SLE standards the norm for public sector buildings, and I strongly encourage private developers to join in this effort too. In fact, SLE buildings are a smart investment, and can provide building owners with good payoffs from the energy saved over the building lifecycle.

For example, developers and building owners can expect to recoup their investment in a new commercial building that has achieved the Green Mark SLE standard within 4.5 to 6.5 years. The building will also continue to reap energy cost savings over the rest of its lifetime. SLE buildings therefore make both environmental and financial sense.

Moving on, our third target is for our best-in-class buildings to achieve 80% improvement in energy efficiency from 2005 levels by 2030. Today, our best-in-class buildings have achieved an improvement of over 70%.

Getting to our target of 80% will require continued investment in R&D and strong collaboration between agencies, the research community and industry players, to develop innovative solutions that push the boundaries of building energy efficiency.

The enhanced $45 million Green Building Innovation Cluster (or GBIC) 2.0 rolled out last year is a reflection of our commitment to R&D in advancing our green building agenda. I’m confident that the GBIC 2.0 will enable us to accelerate the development and deployment of promising energy efficient technologies.

Recognising Exemplary Projects 

Over the years, the Buildings sector has played a prominent role in advancing Singapore’s sustainability agenda. Just looking at commercial buildings alone, 172 have been Green Mark-certified since 2015. On an annual basis, the carbon reduction achieved from these buildings is equivalent to removing 30,000 internal combustion engine cars off our roads or planting an 80,000-hectare forest!

For comparison, 1 hectare is equivalent to about 1.5 soccer fields. So, 80,000 hectares of forest would be equivalent to 120,000 soccer fields combined! This demonstrates the significant impact that green buildings can have on our environment.

Tonight, we want to recognise 14 exemplary building projects. These are our frontrunners who are leading the way in our green building journey. These projects are of various building typologies – from commercial and institutional buildings to residential buildings.

They have gone above and beyond the Green Mark Platinum standards to achieve outstanding performance not only in terms of energy efficiency, but also in terms of the Green Mark 2021 sustainability outcomes.

They show that all types of buildings have the potential to achieve exemplary sustainability results that contribute to emissions reduction, and create value for their stakeholders in the long run.

Earlier, I spoke about our target and efforts to mainstream SLE buildings from 2030. I’m heartened to learn that some buildings today have gone beyond SLE standards to reach Positive Energy status. This means achieving energy efficiency standards of 60% or more over 2005 levels, and producing more energy than the building consumes.

One example which we will be recognising later this evening is Dulwich College in Singapore. Dulwich College is a Green Mark Platinum Zero Energy building that has adopted multiple green building technologies to lower its energy consumption and produce energy on-site.

For example, it uses a Smart Digital Twin for system control, energy efficiency monitoring and building performance optimisation. It also uses photocell sensors for daylight harvesting, which allow a building to lower its energy consumption by automatically adjusting the amount of electric lighting needed for a space based on the amount of natural light available. Renewable energy is also generated through an extensive building integrated photovoltaic system on the roof and northwest façade, as well as solar panels located within the campus.

Beyond its incredible energy performance, Dulwich College has also earned the Intelligence, Maintenance, as well as Health and Well-Being Green Mark badges owing to its use of smart technologies, its design for maintainability and efforts to create healthier environments for building users. Dulwich College is indeed a building we can learn and model after!

Tonight, we will also be commending 3 winners of the ASEAN Energy Award who are also SGBC Members. The ASEAN Energy Award is one of Southeast Asia’s most prominent awards in recognising best practices towards energy sustainability.

One of them is Azendian, a firm which won the award in the Special Submission, Cutting Edge Technology category for its Azendian Estate heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (or H-VAC) Energy Optimisation Solution. This solution can save H-VAC energy 24-7 in real-time, with zero human intervention. It is able to do so through state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technology which can be seamlessly connected into a building’s existing management system.

Using existing information from a building such as its occupancy rate and utility tariff rate, Azendian’s solution can autonomously learn its unique characteristics and build an AI model for system optimisation. Azendian Estate is also a proactive, self-learning solution that will continuously learn and optimise the building’s energy efficiency without compromising indoor temperature and occupancy comfort.

The buildings and technologies that are being showcased this evening give us cause to be excited and optimistic about the future of green buildings. 

Even as we recognise these exemplary building projects and technologies, let’s not forget the men and women behind these buildings.

I would like to express our gratitude to each and every single person along the value chain who has contributed their ideas and expertise to make these green buildings a reality. Without their support and commitment, we would not have been able to come this far in our green building journey and achieve the progress that we see today.

I sincerely like to thank all of you for journeying with us. We can have plans, legislation and various platforms. But without the support from each and everyone of you here, including those looking after the operational aspect of the buildings to make our efforts a reality, we would not be able to achieve what we have.

Conclusion

To conclude, transitioning to a low-carbon built environment is painstaking work. It requires long-term commitment, collaboration across the value chain, and advancements in innovation and technology.

But it is also urgent and necessary work to flatten the emissions curve so that we can slow down the pace of climate change which is already creating devastating impacts around the world. We have a collective responsibility to be good stewards of our environment.

Let’s continue to work in close partnership to scale greater heights in our green building journey, and build a greener, brighter future for generations to come. 

I thank all of you and I offer my heartiest congratulations to all the certificate recipients tonight. I wish all of you a good evening ahead.

Thank you.