SINGAPORE - The concept of green buildings is not well known to around 60 per cent, or three out of five, companies here, a new report has found. Around the same proportion also find the costs of greening a building and its uncertain return on investment prohibitive.

Such attitudes, the report says, stand in the way of Singapore’s ambitious plan to green 80 per cent of buildings by 2030, with only 12 per cent of firms indicating that all their operations utilise green buildings. 

Surveying more than 500 firms in various industries between October 2022 and February 2023, the report by energy management system company Schneider Electric and the Singapore Green Building Council (SGBC) also gives recommendations for accelerating the adoption of green buildings here. 

Buildings are considered green if they achieve the Building and Construction Authority Green Mark, which evaluates a building’s environmental impact and performance.

This can involve retrofitting an old building with more energy-efficient components, or constructing new buildings in a carbon-efficient way. 

With Singapore’s buildings accounting for more than 20 per cent of national carbon emissions, more must be done to encourage organisations to tap the support schemes available, said Mr Yoon Young Kim, cluster president for Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei at Schneider Electric Singapore.

“Studies show that a person spends around 90 per cent of his day indoors, and with so much time spent inside of buildings, creating the cleanest and greenest built environment possible is vital to fostering healthy communities,” he said.

The investment needed to build such environments should not be seen as prohibitive, added Mr Yoon, referencing retrofitting works Schneider Electric has done to make its office building more energy efficient.

After 3½ years, the money saved from reduced energy use paid for the initial cost of the green upgrades.

Such investments can be supported by the Government, said SGBC president Lee Ang Seng.

The $63 million Green Mark Incentive Scheme, for instance, was introduced in 2022 to give building owners grants for emission reductions achieved through retrofitting their developments. 

Financial support is only one part of making a building more environmentally friendly, said Mr Yoon.

The built environment ecosystem can be quite complex, with many stakeholders involved in the construction of a single building, with every step involving some amount of carbon emission. 

Illustrating this, Mr Yoon said a business is often a tenant of a building owned by a landlord, whose developer hired a contractor for its construction.

The transport of building materials and the materials themselves also become part of a building’s environmental cost. 

Figuring out where to intervene in this complicated system to reduce carbon emissions is part of the lack of awareness of what it means to green a building, he explained. 

In the case of retrofitting a building to make it more sustainable, there is often the question of who should foot the bill, said Mr Yoon. 

For example, businesses may not see the value in retrofitting their units as they might believe that it is the landlord’s responsibility, while the landlord may not be motivated to pursue these renovations since it can pass on energy costs to tenants. 

This can create a gridlock where neither is willing to move first.

While Singapore presently takes a “carrot” approach to greening buildings, with businesses rewarded for being more sustainable, businesses should be prepared for a switch to the “stick” approach, where they face penalties for not being green, said Mr Yoon. 

For instance, a business that has not been certified as a green company may not be allowed to operate, he said.

“As the circle of acceptable behaviour with respect to sustainability begins to close, businesses will find that they will have no way to escape going green.”

The report shows promising results in this regard, with almost half of all businesses planning to increase their investment in using green buildings in the next one to two years. 

Mr Yoon said company and government leaders must continue to mobilise towards sustainable objectives.

If not, he warned, the green transition will not happen.