on the challenges ahead - Roof & Facade

COVER STORY: INTERVIEW
Q. 1. The Government has, in recent times, announced
several initiatives aimed at getting
businesses and big users of energy to think
more ‘green’ – from property developers to
owners of car fleets.
Do you think:
i) these are being taken up enthusiastically
and,
ii) can more can be done to encourage businesses,
both big and small, to go ‘green’?
2. How else can the sustainable message be
driven home to the business community?
A. Businesses and big users of energy are starting to
think more ‘green’ as people become increasingly
aware of the damage that we are doing to the environment
and the long term cost this will inflict on us. With
this increasing awareness and education, we are getting
more support from business and energy consumers.
However as with all things, more can always be
done. With regard to what we are doing to drive the
“message home “ NEA is trying to tackle this on several
fronts with various programmes.
One programme is the Corporate Environment
Champions (EC) programme, which aims to create a
pool of environmentally-proactive individuals in the
corporate sector. These Environment Champions then
partner NEA in driving green initiatives in their companies.
The network of Corporate ECs also learn from each
other through the sharing of best practices. As more
companies realise that being environmentally friendly
can help their bottomline, the green movement gains
momentum in businesses.
Some of our current projects to promote energy efficiency
among businesses are still being assessed and
fine tuned. We have noticed some initial successes in
projects such as EASe (http://www.e2singapore.gov.sg/
ease-success-stories.html) and labeling programmes.
Another project we are working on is a scheme
to provide grants for energy efficient technologies
(GREET) to further bridge the gap in energy efficiency
investment to demonstrate its low-risk, high-reward nature.
Another programme is the Corporate And School
Partnership (CASP) programme, which matches coporate
partners with schools to work on environmental
projects. Students are encouraged to look for innova-
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