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Business Times
25-07-2025
- Business
- Business Times
Sustainability must be top-led and embedded across organisation, say panellists at BT's inaugural Sustainability Impact Dialogue
Jeffery Tan, chief sustainability officer of Jardine Cycle & Carriage, shared how early water tracking at the company uncovered usage four times higher than expected. The culprit was an underground leak, which, once fixed, delivered significant cost savings. 'When we made the connection, the CFO got it, the ops manager got it, and suddenly (the business value of sustainability) became real to them – as opposed to just a concept being pushed down,' he said. In response, Dr Khor said companies whose core business is not sustainability often overlook waste and resource use. 'But when you start looking into these areas – energy flow, materials waste – you may uncover new revenue streams. Even if it's not a revenue stream, it's cost savings and that is really important.' Lim also underscored the need to simplify sustainability messaging, moving away from jargon-heavy or overly abstract language, such as 'Scope 3 emissions'. This refers to indirect emissions that occur outside a company's direct operations and may not resonate with business owners. 'Being able to convert the language of sustainability away from that non-human language and into real, operational business language – I think it's a great idea,' he said. Support for getting started To companies that are unsure of where or how to begin, both speakers stressed the importance of just taking the first step, no matter how small. Dr Khor said SMEs can start with measures such as switching to energy-efficient equipment, which qualifies for up to 70 per cent support under the National Environment Agency's Energy Efficiency Grant. She also highlighted other government schemes, such as the Economic Development Board's Resource Efficiency Grant for Emissions, which supports emissions reduction projects at manufacturing facilities and data centres, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore's Gprnt initiative, which helps businesses automatically convert their operational data into environmental, social and governance disclosures for free. 'There is a very rich ecosystem of sustainability support (offered by the government) in terms of grants and incentives… so much that SMEs tell us that there's too much,' said Dr Khor. To help navigate this, she encouraged companies to tap Enterprise Singapore's SME Sustainability Hub, a one-stop platform for resources, training and support. Lim similarly urged SMEs not to go it alone. Banks and government agencies, he said, can help companies assess where they are and connect them to solution providers. He noted that UOB's ecosystem platforms – such as U-Solar and U-Energy – bundle technology partners, financing and advisory support to ease adoption. '(SMEs) simply talk to the bank, the bank connects them within the ecosystem, and they can access financing at the same time,' he said. Beyond top-down directives, bottom-up initiatives were also spotlighted during the dialogue. Audience members, including representatives from industry groups and social enterprises, shared ideas such as developing simplified sustainability indices or certifications to help SMEs get started. In response, both Dr Khor and Lim welcomed such ground-up efforts, noting that these can complement government support schemes – and, if endorsed or recognised by the government, potentially gain greater traction through procurement requirements or green finance channels.
Business Times
22-05-2025
- Business
- Business Times
Launch of sustainability disclosure tool to simplify SMEs' reporting efforts
[SINGAPORE] Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore may be able to simplify their sustainability reporting efforts, with the launch of a disclosure tool by sustainability reporting and data platform company Gprnt on Thursday (May 22). After Singapore companies retrieve utilities data using their corporate digital identity known as Corppass, the tool will then automatically convert the data to reflect the amount of emissions arising from their operations (Scope 1), or those from their purchase of electricity (Scope 2). The platform retrieves four data points – three of which are related to a company's carbon footprint. These are their water, town gas and electricity usage, which are sourced from the relevant government agencies, namely, national water agency PUB and the Energy Market Authority. The fourth data point is revenue. The tool's ability to retrieve data from the government comes after Gprnt's integration with the Government Technology Agency of Singapore's Myinfo business service, which allows Singapore-registered businesses to share and retrieve their corporate data with participating organisations after consent is given. The integration of the disclosure tool with government data comes about six months after Gprnt unveiled its range of decarbonisation solutions. Addressing the lack of credible ESG data The commercial company was launched in 2023 as a spinoff from Project Greenprint, an initiative by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, to develop solutions that could help address the lack of credible environmental, social and governance data that financiers could use for sustainable financing. A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU Friday, 12.30 pm ESG Insights An exclusive weekly report on the latest environmental, social and governance issues. Sign Up Sign Up It received S$6 million in seed funding from digital payments company Ant International and Japanese bank MUFG. The latest disclosure tool is provided for free to SMEs, but Lionel Wong, executive director of Gprnt, told The Business Times that it is currently engaging with large corporates, financial institutions and government agencies to work out how these entities can access these data on a chargeable basis. 'It is actually beneficial to these large corporates and financial institutions to have more trusted data on their supply and value chain, because otherwise it's very difficult for them to properly calculate their own emissions footprint and deliver on their own net-zero transition plans if they don't have good data,' said Wong. '(They) pay for the disclosure licence so that they can be an end point on the Gprnt infrastructure, and somebody who is disclosing granular and verifiable information on Gprnt can transmit that information to the paying recipient,' he added. Speaking at the launch event on the same day, OCBC chief sustainability officer Mike Ng said the lender can now obtain credible data of companies they finance through Gprnt, without needing to manually obtain copies of their utility bills. The data is used by the bank to determine if a company is eligible for green or sustainability-linked loans (SLL). 'As you can imagine, it is very laborious, requires a lot of time, a lot of effort. And the critical issue is that it's very prone to errors, especially if we are dealing with many, many SMEs in our case,' said Ng. The emissions data via Gprnt can also be used by OCBC to track how clients are performing against the sustainability performance targets they have set for their SLLs. Beyond Singapore While MUFG's customers outside of Japan are mainly large corporations, its head of ESG finance Colin Chen said that emissions data from SMEs would eventually become part of the Scope 3 emissions of large corporations, which refer to indirect emissions resulting from their supply chain. He added that a partnership between the private sector and government was needed to develop an ecosystem where credible data is easily generated and accessible, which was part of the reason why MUFG decided to be one of Gprnt's seed investors. Given that this disclosure tool is backed by regulators in Singapore, Chen said the bank was able to go to its partner banks in other Asean markets to discuss expanding the platform beyond the city-state. To this end, Gprnt's Wong said the intention was always for the platform to be cross-deployable to other markets and not constrained to Singapore. He added that the company is currently pursuing 'similar engagements in other markets that we go into, so far as that data exists and the infrastructure exists', though he declined to reveal the markets. Further down the road, Gprnt is also looking to incorporate Scope 3 emissions data into its platform.
Business Times
22-05-2025
- Business
- Business Times
Sustainability disclosure tool to simplify SMEs' reporting efforts
[SINGAPORE] Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore may be able to simplify their sustainability reporting efforts, with the launch of a disclosure tool by sustainability reporting and data platform company Gprnt on Thursday (May 22). After Singapore companies retrieve their utilities data using their corporate digital identity known as Corppass, the tool will then automatically convert the data to reflect the amount of emissions arising from their operations (Scope 1), or those from their purchase of electricity (Scope 2). The platform retrieves four data points – three of which are related to a company's carbon footprint. These are their water, town gas and electricity usage, which are sourced from the relevant government agencies, namely, national water agency PUB and the Energy Market Authority. The fourth data point is revenue. The tool's ability to retrieve data from the government comes after Gprnt's integration with the Government Technology Agency of Singapore's Myinfo business service, which allows Singapore-registered businesses to share and retrieve their corporate data with participating organisations after consent is given. The integration of the disclosure tool with government data comes about six months after Gprnt unveiled its range of decarbonisation solutions. The commercial company was launched in 2023 as a spinoff from Project Greenprint, an initiative by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, to develop solutions that could help address the lack of credible environmental, social and governance data that financiers could use for sustainable financing. A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU Friday, 12.30 pm ESG Insights An exclusive weekly report on the latest environmental, social and governance issues. Sign Up Sign Up It received S$6 million in seed funding from digital payments company Ant International and Japanese bank MUFG. The latest disclosure tool is provided for free to SMEs, but Lionel Wong, executive director of Gprnt, told The Business Times that it is currently engaging with large corporates, financial institutions and government agencies to work out how these entities can access these data on a chargeable basis. 'It is actually beneficial to these large corporates and financial institutions to have more trusted data on their supply and value chain, because otherwise it's very difficult for them to properly calculate their own emissions footprint and deliver on their own net-zero transition plans if they don't have good data,' said Wong. '(They) pay for the disclosure licence so that they can be an end point on the Gprnt infrastructure, and somebody who is disclosing granular and verifiable information on Gprnt can transmit that information to the paying recipient,' he added. Speaking at the launch event on the same day, OCBC chief sustainability officer Mike Ng said the lender can now obtain credible data of companies they finance through Gprnt, without needing to manually obtain copies of their utility bills. The data is used by the bank to determine if a company is eligible for green or sustainability-linked loans (SLL). 'As you can imagine, it is very laborious, requires a lot of time, a lot of effort. And the critical issue is that it's very prone to errors, especially if we are dealing with many, many SMEs in our case,' said Ng. The emissions data via Gprnt can also be used by OCBC to track how clients are performing against the sustainability performance targets they have set for their SLLs. While MUFG's customers outside of Japan are mainly large corporations, its head of ESG finance Colin Chen said that emissions data from SMEs would eventually become part of the Scope 3 emissions of large corporations, which refer to indirect emissions resulting from their supply chain. He added that a partnership between the private sector and government was needed to develop an ecosystem where credible data is easily generated and accessible, which was part of the reason why MUFG decided to be one of Gprnt's seed investors. Given that this disclosure tool is backed by regulators in Singapore, Chen said the bank was able to go to its partner banks in other Asean markets to discuss expanding the platform beyond the city-state. To this end, Gprnt's Wong said the intention was always for the platform to be cross-deployable to other markets and not constrained to Singapore. He added that the company is currently pursuing 'similar engagements in other markets that we go into, so far as that data exists and the infrastructure exists', though he declined to reveal the markets. Further down the road, Gprnt is also looking to incorporate Scope 3 emissions data into its platform.
