In this podcast, Troy Carter, co-founder & CEO of Earthshot Labs talks of putting together an international collaboration to help learn what it takes to protect nature. Earthshot Labs is pioneering a high tech solution to help empower  communities with small scale, low-tech and high-touch fixes to the ecological crisis. With the use of simulations they would learn about what needs to be done. With the use of data, they would be able to access carbon money without the current difficulties.

All this would sound like science fiction except Earthshot Labs has just received funding from a very well known Silicon Valley investor and will be putting its theories in practice in South America.

If you are an innovator in clean energy, smart grids, carbon markets and electric vehicles anywhere in the world there are four reasons you should consider being in Singapore.

IP Protection. R&D support. Green finance. Supportive customers.

And the Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore should be on your list of organizations to visit. In its capacity as an industry association, it wants the industry to grow. And has a focus on providing the ecosystem for innovative young companies.

There is something beautiful about timber that makes it the construction material of choice for some of the iconic tourism projects . Add to that, the efficiency that comes from prefab constriction.

For timber to have its rightful place in the sustainable world, digital technologies will have to tell you exactly where it comes from and about how its cultivation is protecting nature and communities.

To understand the international nature of  new food, you can follow the career of Eugene Wang. He took his Taiwanese Buddhist family's recipe to California ten years back to make seafood substitutes. The New England crab cakes made from plant protein are his personal favorite. Then he came back to Singapore where space is at a premium to work on making protein powder by fermenting microalgae. Now he is in the Netherlands working with international food companies.

Along the way he talks of the importance of how making alternate food is not that hard but getting the "correct recipe" for customer and regulatory acceptance is an entirely different story.

Not all companies can say exactly where they are on their path to a net zero carbon footprint. Siemens can.  And the technology it uses to do so is now also available to others.

Listen to this podcast with Sunil Yadav, Head Building Performance & Sustainability to know the four components of the solution that Siemens has for buildings and data centers. Together, they will help you define your path, reduce energy consumption, procure renewable energy, manage and measure your progress.

Sunil also talks of the advantages of being based in Singapore and the overall state of the ASEAN market.

In a warming world, the need for cooling will only rise. nEXERGY, a company founded by Lekha Patmanathan helps customers in Singapore and the ASEAN region use ClimaCheck, to monitor cooling systems. Cooling solutions are expensive equipment and squeezing performance out of them not only helps companies manage their expenses but also avoid expensive upgrades. Electrical utilities have partnered with Lekha’s company for the same reason: a distribution utility that helps its customers become more efficient stands to benefit by being able to meet increasing customer demand with the existing generation infrastructure.

Net zero pledges by large global corporations should help grow this market.

Balancing quality of projects with streamlined processes and transparent information is key.

Anton Root, Head of Research at Allied Crowds , a company that enables finance for the SDGs demystifies the market for us.

The market size of voluntary carbon offset markets in land and forestry is small but changing fast.  Net zero pledges by large global corporations should help grow this market.

This allows various types of organizations (combinations of commercial  and community organizations) to come together. However, project development takes a long time. Carbon prices of these products vary widely as well..

Indonesia and Vietnam are the two countries in the ASEAN region to watch. The "to be launched" Singapore exchange for nature based solutions should help provide a market for project developers.

If quality clean technology products exist, results based financing can help create markets for them

How can you ensure that markets do not collapse when incentives are withdrawn?

In this podcast, Martijn Veen Global Head of Energy at SNV  tells us how. There are four things really:

There has to be a  data driven mechanism to allocate incentives.

The processes have to be clear and transparent

There needs to be some experimentation ahead to understand what will work

The incentive provider will have to work with commercial capital providers

How can you ensure that markets do not collapse when incentives are withdrawn?

In this podcast, Martijn Veen Global Head of Energy at SNV,  tells us how. There are four things really:

There has to be a  data driven mechanism to allocate incentives.

The processes have to be clear and transparent.

There needs to be some experimentation ahead to understand what will work.

The incentive provider will have to work with commercial capital providers.

Why should industrial and commercial customers in ASEAN adopt microgrid solutions?

Canopy Power, the company founded by Sujay Malve, has been setting up microgrids for remote resorts in the Asia Pacific region. Customers have been benefiting from the money saved from diesel. But post pandemic, Sujay hopes that a focus on attracting sustainability conscious customers seeking a staycation would drive customer demand. New categories of customers -for example fisheries which export to Western markets – are also switching to cleaner power.

Canopy Power is in Singapore and though the pandemic has created multiple travel restrictions the Singaporean ecosystem helps attract customers, talent and finance.