Despite these implementation challenges, Srivastava says public-private partnerships have a huge potential in tackling zero carbon. He cites data sharing and collaboration between governments and corporations as an example, which ensures the standardisation of metrics so that performance across the city can give customers and investors clear insights.
More than 70 cities worldwide have pledged to become carbon-neutral by 2050, which means they will produce less emissions than they can offset. However, in Asia-Pacific (APAC) gateway cities, more than 65% of the buildings were built before 2005, further complicating the sustainability challenge, says Vinamra Srivastava, chief sustainability officer of CapitaLand Investment (CLI) (SGX:9CI
) .
Speaking at Temasek’s Ecosperity Week on June 7 at a panel titled “Harnessing Public-Private Cooperation for Zero-Carbon Cities”, Srivastava adds that the difficulty is further exacerbated by the fact that real estate the size of New York City will be developed every month for the next 40 years, and capex investments needed to decarbonise these buildings have a challenging returns profile in the short term.
