Singapore must retrofit its older buildings to improve their sustainability standards in order to hit 2030 green building targets, says Minister for National Development Desmond Lee.
Speaking at the official opening of the refurbished DBS Newton Green on July 18, Lee provided updates on the Singapore Green Building Masterplan launched last year, which set out an “80-80-80 in 2030” target for the built environment.
Singapore has greened more than 49% of buildings here. This is past the halfway mark of the first target, which is to green 80% of buildings by gross floor area (GFA) by 2030.
“We need to sustain our momentum and push ahead further,” says Lee. “In particular, we need to retrofit many more of our older buildings to improve their sustainability standards.”
Retrofitting is “more challenging” than designing a green building from scratch, adds Lee. “The original development may not have been designed with sustainability in mind, making retrofitting more complex and potentially costly.”
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The second target is for 80% of new developments to be certified Super Low Energy (SLE) by 2030. SLE buildings can save more than 60% of energy compared to 2005 levels, when Singapore began focusing on green buildings.
“We will continue to promote SLE buildings through regulatory requirements and incentives, including enhanced requirements for new developments on Government Land Sales (GLS) sites, and bonus GFA incentives for private developments on non-GLS sites,” says Lee.
The final target is to achieve 80% improvement in energy efficiency compared to 2005 levels in Singapore’s “best-in-class buildings” by 2030.
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According to Lee, these buildings have achieved some 65%-70% improvement. “We have some way to go. This is why we have introduced programmes, such as the Green Buildings Innovation Cluster (GBIC) to support the research, prototyping and demonstration of green building technologies, which will help to make new energy efficient technologies more readily accessible to building owners.”
DBS says it invested over $5 million into retrofitting works for DBS Newton Green, which began in mid-2021. A portion of the cost was covered by a grant awarded by Singapore’s Building and Construction Authority (BCA) under the national GBIC Programme. The building is expected to recover the retrofitting costs within four years.
DBS Newton Green is projected to save at least 580 MWh of energy per year, or 70% of the building's energy consumption before the retrofitting works.
Located at 135 Bukit Timah Road, the refurbished DBS Newton Green houses over 400 employees from various functions across the bank’s consumer banking group.
Photos: Albert Chua/The Edge Singapore
