Singapore is positioning itself as a critical investment hub for green tech startups in Southeast Asia. The region is facing significant risks due to the impacts of climate change, with soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, extreme weather patterns like typhoons, and public health risks from vector-borne diseases like dengue. Thus, the city-state's future can only be guaranteed by adopting sustainable policies that protect soil biodiversity, enhance food production, reduce plastic waste, offset carbon emissions, and more.
Green tech startups like Zuno Carbon and SunGreenH2 are vital for this push toward sustainability, but they need impact investments to fund their research to innovate technological solutions for the country.
Factors why Singapore is leading the green tech sector
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) ranks Singapore amongst the five countries best prepared to use innovative green technologies. The data surveyed 166 countries and analysed frontier tech, including concentrated solar power, the Internet of Things (IoT), wind energy, 5G, Big Data, and biogas.
Here are several factors that show how the city-state is becoming a leader in green tech:
National vision on sustainability
The Singapore Green Plan 2030 is a movement for every citizen to advance the national agenda on sustainable development. It aims to combat global climate change, achieve ambitious and concrete targets on the UN's SDGs (sustainable development goals), and reach net zero emissions by 2050.
Some steps they will take include planting a million trees, registering car models using cleaner energy, reducing landfill waste by 30%, and quadrupling solar energy deployment by 2025.
Governmental green tech initiatives and policies
Professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) highlighted that Singapore's Budget 2024 was a comprehensive roadmap for a sustainable and prosperous future. The budget had "a wide range of initiatives covering economic resilience, social support, and environmental sustainability".
For example, the Finance Minister, Lawrence Wong, set aside SGD 5 billion for a new Future Energy Fund, which enables green technology investments, sustainable infrastructure, and climate adaptation measures. The fund will help with subsea cable financing for delivering low-carbon electricity and building critical infrastructure for hydrogen. It will also ensure startups can obtain enough money to transition to clean energy.
Additionally, they established an Energy Efficiency Grant (EEG), a co-funding scheme to encourage businesses in the food services, manufacturing, and retail sectors to adopt energy-efficient equipment.
Robust investment environment
The Singaporean Government is creating an investor-friendly environment through its new Refundable Investment Credit Scheme. This scheme will help startups and the state remain competitive by attracting foreign investments from large global companies. These financing schemes will also open up high-value jobs for Singaporeans, boosting economic growth.
Extensive green tech industry collaboration
Programs like the GreenTech Challenge are advancing eco-friendly technologies and building a community. They bring together industry stakeholders and government agencies to work toward a common goal of enhancing the startup ecosystem and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
Position as a strategic hub for green companies
Singapore's strategic location and business-friendly environment make it an ideal hub for green tech startups seeking to branch out into other parts of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the greater Asia Pacific area (APAC).
It is highly accessible, secure, and politically stable, and it already has about 7,000 multinational companies, making it attractive to foreign investors. These investors can provide funding and use their environmental safety expertise to mentor green technology company founders.
Singapore's future role in supporting green tech startups
With climate change and pollution becoming consequential problems for our world, Singapore's leaders must continue reaffirming its leadership position in ASEAN's green technology landscape. For example, the government must continue enabling businesses to attend events like the GreenTech Festival by GTF Connect Singapore. It challenges everyone to unite, build a better world, and lead on sustainability.
Some people have given reasons for not adopting sustainable consumption, including the perceived high cost, the effort and time consumed, a lack of information, and the complexity and inadequacy of eco-friendly products. There is also the belief that changing does not make a difference or is unnecessary.
Those feelings must be addressed before it is too late. According to a Rakuten Insight survey, stakeholders can encourage sustainable consumption by making sustainable goods more affordable, increasing the supply and availability of eco-friendly items, and simplifying the product repair process. They must also provide access to and investment resources for green tech startups to provide recycling solutions.
Finally, the Singapore Budget 2024's initiatives will help businesses thrive by cushioning them from rising costs and enabling them to finance green growth projects. Solutions for emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), which requires a lot of energy supply, are still needed. Overall, green tech startups in Southeast Asia can decarbonise the region, but substantial changes in policies and implementation are necessary to achieve this objective.
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