Asian dragon stirring on sustainability
Pragmatism may be driving Asia’s shift to sustainable property, but it’s getting results, says the World Green Building Council’s vice chair Tai Lee Siang, who will speak at Green Cities 2016.
Tai will be will be sharing his insights during the session on ‘Greening the Asian Dragon’ at Green Cities in March.
He says Asian companies are essentially pragmatists that are embracing sustainability to meet market demands.
“Internet connectivity has changed the world. Where sustainability was once an unfamiliar subject, it is fast becoming a hot topic among the young in Asia,” he says.
“With such strong demand changing market focus, it is no wonder that businesses are turning to sustainability. In my opinion, this is what drives enterprises to embrace sustainability.”
The latest Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB), released in September, found that the Asian region had improved its score by 18 per cent in just a year. Fifty-seven per cent of survey participants in Asia are now ranked ‘green stars’ – up from 32 per cent in 2014.
“While I do not doubt there are champions who lead the way in transparency and passion for a greener world, most of Asia’s businesses are still followers.”
While Tai says it would be easy to take a pessimistic view of this attitude, he believes any increasing trend towards sustainability should be celebrated.
An architect and planner, Tai is currently the group managing director of Ong and Ong, a multi-disciplinary consultancy in Singapore. He’s also the immediate past president of the Singapore Green Building Council.
He believes Asian governments are quick to solve “hardware issues” – such as building – but they are less successful in tackling what he calls the “software challenges” of policy, education and engagement.
In this context, Australians are well placed to share their knowledge in driving “citizen engagement” as well as policies that speed up the shift to sustainability in Asia. But to do this, Australian companies will need to better understand the “culture, scale and speed of the Asian mentality”.
One example can be found in the push towards energy efficiency. GRESB found that Asian companies are delivering real operational energy and water savings – with the sector reducing total energy consumption by 1.87 per cent over the reporting period. In comparison, Australia’s consumption actually increased.
However, Tai is not surprised that Asian companies are focused on energy reduction, which he says is “part of a culture of frugality rather than of sustainability.”
He thinks Asian economies are likely to increase their energy consumption as their economies and spending power grows, and warns that, without proper education campaigns, we’ll see the “same trend in energy consumption like Australia”.
However, there are positive signs for the region’s sustainability trajectory. Stock exchanges in Malaysia, China, Indonesia and Taiwan already require some sustainability reporting, while the stock exchanges of Hong Kong and Singapore have both announced plans to increase transparency on a “comply or explain” basis.
Tai says we can expect disclosure and transparency polices to gain “wider application throughout Asia in a very short time.”
And when that happens, Australia’s ranking as the world’s greenest property market will be hotly contested.
Tai Lee Siang will be just one of the speakers at the Green Cities session moderated by Peter Verwer, chief executive of the Asia Pacific Real Estate Association (APREA), on Wednesday 23 March. Book your tickets to Green Cities.