Where Green Comes Standard
Do you know that just by choosing to be a tenant at our industrial and business park properties, you are not only benefitting from sustainable space solutions, but contributing through the various green initiatives championed by CapitaLand? Time to stake your claim.
Here’re the hard facts. With more than half of the world’s population (and growing) now living in urban cities[1], buildings have become a major source of energy and water usage as well as carbon emissions.
Yet, they are quite literally the building blocks of today’s highly urbanised cities, crafting a wide variety of spaces for denizens to work, live, play and socialise. It is this inherent capacity to efficiently organise resources and spontaneously create social spaces, that buildings are enabling cities to fully optimise the use of land and achieve high productivity.
Green bloods in our veins
As Singapore’s leading real estate company, CapitaLand recognises its responsibility as well as the opportunity for it to be a good steward of the environment. We are always on the look-out for ways to do good for the environment and local communities. In fact, sustainability is an imperative that ranks high on our management agenda and is tightly interwoven into the fabric of our everyday operations.
But like all businesses, we still need natural resources, such as water and energy, for our daily operations. We call these resources our Natural Capital. In using them, we always strive to achieve better efficiency and lower carbon footprint in each of our properties.
Even as we deliver space solutions to tenants, we are hard at work with multiple stakeholders to address how our large portfolio of properties and wide span of operations can positively impact the environment and local communities in responsible and green ways.
This rigour to think and act sustainably is not limited to just our operations, but right at the start during the design, master planning and construction of the business parks and commercial properties, as well as in downstream asset enhancement.
Green partners in our midst
As our tenants, you are already benefitting from many of our green initiatives. Besides owning the boasting right of working in a green building, you get to enjoy better quality of work-life and a conducive environment that actively supports green lifestyle and choices. You are also automatically enrolled in some of our green initiatives where we, building and businesses, work together to reduce our impacts on the environment. Here’re five more reasons to be proud of being a CapitaLand tenant.
Green Building
40 of our buildings are certified BCA Green Mark, with 25% achieving the highest rating of platinum. In fact, Ascendas Reit, which owns 34 of these properties, has the largest number of Green Mark buildings among Singapore REITS, thanks to our long-standing practice of integrating environmentally-friendly features into our building design. We are particularly proud of clinching the first-ever BCA Green Mark Platinum Award for an Existing District for Singapore Science Park 1. It showed not only our capabilities in revitalising the 40-year-old estate, but the creation of a sustainable platform at the district level that could support the environmental performance and programmes of individual buildings within it. Many benefits have already been realised, like the 60%-over savings in energy usage for infrastructure and public amenities.
Green Energy
With more than 21,000 solar panels installed on six properties, we now have the largest combined solar farm by a real estate company in Singapore. The total output of some 10,000 MWh of electricity from clean and sustainable solar energy is enough to power 2,300 four-room HDB flats for a year and offset 4,300 tonnes of CO2. The effort has helped LogisTech become the first industrial building to be awarded the BCA Green Mark Platinum Super Low Energy (SLE) status. At one-north, we are also starting to use renewable energy for common facilities at Neuros and Immunos this year. The programme, when extended to Nexus@one-north and Nucleos by end-2022, is expected to help us avoid another 2,400 tonnes of carbon emissions each year. Plans are already underway to put more solar panels on our properties – watch this space.
Green Lifestyle
We fully encourage and support the growing trend of green lifestyle and commuting among our tenants. Green niches are carved out in our buildings, including the upcoming Grab HQ and 27 International Business Park (the former iQuest@IBP) to promote the overall wellbeing of people as well as to provide stunning venues for outdoor events. 48 charging points for electric vehicles have been installed in ten properties, including two recent ones at Infinite Studios in Mediapolis and 5 Science Park Drive. Amongst the Singapore REITs, Ascendas Reit has the most public EV charging points in Singapore. We also have bicycle parking stations and end-of-trip facilities in 5 Science Park Drive, Nordic European Centre and the upcoming high-specs building, UBIX.
Green Financing
Taking up green financing demonstrates our commitment to sustainability and improving the environmental performance of our properties, as all proceeds from it can only be used for green projects that meet the selection criteria of Ascendas Reit’s Green Finance Framework. Ascendas Reit has issued its first green bond in August 2020 as well as the first real estate green perpetual securities in Asia in September 2020. The S$400 million proceeds raised will go into refinancing selected properties with a minimum green rating of BCA Green Mark GoldPlus. The current list of 17 properties include ONE@Changi City, Nexus@one-north and Aperia.
Green Future
Our sustainability efforts are consistently recognised by the industry, like SIAS Investors’ Choice Awards 2019, and further validated by our listing on sustainability indices, like SGX’s iEdge SG ESG Leaders Index and iEdge SG ESG Transparency Index. As our tenants, you will always be assured of CapitaLand’s unwavering commitment to sustainability, as we strive together towards the responsible and sustainable use of our Natural Capital. We welcome you to leverage our green initiatives, or better yet, work together with us to care and do more for the environment and local communities.
[1] https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html
Looking for a sustainable business space or to participate in our green initiatives? Contact us today.