Can a city-state of just 6 million shape the climate future of an entire region? Singapore is betting big on green energy, carbon markets, and regional partnerships. But beyond infrastructure and capital, a deeper question looms: Do we have the people — and the cultural intelligence — to lead together? Yingying Li, Co-founder & President of the Green Expertise Council, explores why Singapore is rising, what’s still missing, and how we can co-create a new kind of climate leadership.

Why Singapore May Hold the Key to Green Leadership in Asia — and Why the World Should Care by Yingying Li. With kind acknowledgements.

At the Crossroads of Global Disruption

As U.S.-China dynamics intensify and global climate action faces continued setbacks, Singapore finds itself at a rare geopolitical intersection: neutral, competent, and future-oriented. It has emerged as a trusted interlocutor in global dialogue and is now seeking to leverage this unique position to become a catalyst for Asia’s green transformation.

Singapore is not simply playing catch-up in the sustainability race. It is making a deliberate bid to lead. Through a blend of pragmatic governance, strategic positioning, and financial innovation, it is building an ecosystem where green ambition meets execution.

Singapore’s Green Ambition: From Domestic Policy to Regional Relevance

At the heart of Singapore’s sustainability strategy lies the Singapore Green Plan 2030 — a whole-of-nation movement built on five strategic pillars: Energy Reset, Green Economy, Sustainable Living, Resilient Future, and City in Nature.

Key targets include:

• Quadrupling solar energy deployment to at least 2 GWp by 2030
• Importing up to 6 GW of low-carbon electricity by 2035, expected to meet 30% of national demand
• Raising the carbon tax from SGD $5/ton today to between $45–80/ton by 2030, one of Asia’s highest planned rates
• Installing 60,000 EV charging points and transitioning all diesel buses to electric
• Reducing landfill waste by 30% and making 20% of schools carbon-neutral by 2030.

The government has also launched a Green Bond Framework, issued its sovereign green bonds, and joined initiatives like the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) to catalyze climate capital. The Sustainable Finance Action Plan and Project Greenprint by MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore) aim to embed sustainability data and ESG assurance into the financial system. These efforts reflect a model of green governance rooted in data, clarity, and long-term thinking.

Southeast Asia’s Green Compass: From vision to execution

Singapore’s green strategy isn’t limited to its borders — it is also helping shape the trajectory of Southeast Asia. In June 2022, Singapore received its first imported renewable electricity through the Laos–Thailand–Malaysia–Singapore Power Integration Project (LTMS-PIP), ASEAN’s first multilateral cross-border electricity trade. This project delivered up to 100 MW of renewable hydropower from Laos, marking a breakthrough in regional energy cooperation.

To accelerate this momentum, Singapore increased its low-carbon electricity import target from 4 GW to 6 GW, with conditional approvals granted to 10 projects involving Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Australia. This move has not only unlocked substantial private-sector interest, but also positioned Singapore as a demand-side anchor driving regional investment in green infrastructure.

Singapore’s energy ecosystem now hosts over 100 clean energy companies, from developers like Vena Energy and Sembcorp, to service providers like Schneider Electric, to R&D leaders like SERIS. The commissioning of Southeast Asia’s largest energy storage system (ESS) — a 285 MWh project by Sembcorp — further illustrates how Singapore combines scale with innovation.

Through the Financing Asia’s Transition Partnership (FAST-P), MAS seeks to mobilize US$5 billion in blended finance to accelerate decarbonization, especially in coal phase out, renewable infrastructure, and emerging technologies like hydrogen and carbon capture.

Carbon Leadership: Shaping the Markets of Tomorrow

While many countries are still drafting roadmaps, Singapore is operationalizing carbon markets with precision.

1. Carbon Services Ecosystem

Singapore is now home to over 150 carbon services companies, creating one of the most comprehensive ecosystems in Asia. These firms specialize in project origination, MRV (monitoring, reporting, verification), carbon credit certification, trading, and legal structuring.

Key players include:

• South Pole (environmental consulting)
• Verra (standard-setting body)
• BeZero Carbon (carbon ratings agency)
• Carbon Trust
• Singapore-based consultancies and startups that serve clients across Southeast Asia.

This ecosystem allows Singapore to serve as a regional launchpad for high-integrity carbon projects.

2. Climate Impact X (CIX)

Launched in 2021 by DBS, SGX, Temasek, and Standard Chartered, CIX is a global marketplace for voluntary carbon credit trading. It features both an auction platform and a curated marketplace, facilitating transparent transactions with an emphasis on quality and integrity.

By 2024, CIX had facilitated millions of dollars in credit trades, focusing on nature-based solutions and engineered removals.

3. Financial Infrastructure for Carbon

• MAS has been actively integrating carbon into financial frameworks:
• Project Greenprint: Developing ESG disclosure tools
• FAST-P: Blended finance platform supporting decarbonization
• Green and Transition Taxonomies: Enabling sustainable classification of carbon-related activities.

4. Article 6 Bilateral Agreements

Singapore has signed bilateral carbon credit transfer agreements under the Paris Agreement’s Article 6 with countries like Ghana and Papua New Guinea, aiming for high-integrity carbon trading that can count toward national targets.

Why Singapore Is Uniquely Positioned to Lead

Before we examine the critical role of standards and talent, it’s worth asking: Why could Singapore be considered so uniquely suited to lead Asia’s green transformation?

An answer lies not just in policy or capital, but in accelerating the real-world momentum we can observe today.

Singapore’s strategic location at the heart of Southeast Asia also gives it regional visibility and access to one of the world’s most dynamic growth zones. Its legacy of safety, rule of law, and political stability makes it an ideal sandbox for emerging technologies and frontier business models to take root. Time and again, Singapore has proven to be a trusted launchpad for global businesses seeking regional scale.

Equally important is the government’s proactive stance. Through thoughtful regulation, public-private partnerships, and long-term planning, Singapore actively engineers a safety net for innovation. It deliberately positions itself as a testbed — not just for Singapore’s benefit, but to serve the broader ASEAN region as a hub for sustainable development.

This isn’t just theory — we are already witnessing a surge of climate tech companies, green manufacturers, and capital-backed international sustainability ventures selecting Singapore as their launchpad into Southeast Asia. Whether driven by supply chain diversification, strategic decarbonization, or global realignment, Singapore is increasingly being chosen, not just by default, but by deliberate design.

Compared to traditional climate finance centers like Switzerland or rising investment hubs in the Gulf, Singapore offers something different: proximity to climate-vulnerable regions, direct access to high-growth ASEAN markets, and a legal-regulatory environment built for experimentation and trust.

In a world where continuity and coherence are increasingly rare, Singapore’s stability, credibility, and convening power aren’t just strengths — they are strategic assets for the green future.

Navigating the Question of Standards and Leadership

As Singapore positions itself as a green leader in Asia, one critical question lingers beneath the surface: In the evolving landscape of global sustainability and climate governance, who gets to set the rules?

Singapore’s push toward leadership in green finance, energy transition, and carbon markets inevitably intersects with international standards — from the ISSB (International Sustainability Standards Board) to Article 6 rules under the Paris Agreement, and frameworks like TCFD, TNFD, or the EU Taxonomy.

Will Singapore align itself closely with these top-tier, globally accepted standards — adapting fast to new ESG disclosures, reporting regimes, and market rules? Or will it gradually tailor its own rulebook, creating region-specific mechanisms that respond more closely to the Southeast Asian context?

This tension — between following and shaping — is not a weakness, but a mark of maturity and ambition. It signals that Singapore is not merely implementing compliance frameworks, but grappling with how to lead responsibly in a multi-polar, multi-speed climate transition.

What’s at stake is more than governance: it’s about credibility, influence, and long-term trust.

We invite you to reflect: Should Singapore aim to be a model follower of global standards, or a pragmatic architect of regional ones? What are the risks and opportunities of each path? This is a conversation worth having.

The Talent Challenge: Building Human Infrastructure

Talent: Singapore’s Crown Jewel — and Its Climate Test. To be the “green bridge” between East and West, Singapore needs:

• Cross-cultural facilitators who build trust across jurisdictions
• Carbon market professionals who combine credibility and compliance
• Green finance experts who understand ESG risks, structures, and data
• Hybrid thinkers who can bridge policy, science, and business.

Efforts are underway:

• SkillsFuture, EDB, and together with international partners, have launched ESG and carbon trading training
• NUS, SMU, and other institutions offer certificates in carbon services and sustainable finance
• S$20 million has been committed to building carbon talent capability
• The Singapore Carbon Market Association (SCMA) is fostering dialogue and industry alignment.

But this is still just the beginning. The scarcest resource in climate leadership isn’t capital. It’s human capacity — and cultural intelligence. Because in a world fragmented by silos — whether academia, government, finance, or startups — we don’t just need more specialists. We need bridge-builders: people willing to step outside their informational comfort zones and engage with unfamiliar realities. Cultural intelligence enables us to identify gaps in understanding and build bridges where others see division. It’s not about having all the answers — it’s about the empathy, humility, and curiosity to collaborate across differences.

Take Singapore, for example. It has no shortage of sustainability-minded investors, climate finance professionals, or ESG experts. But if we only engage with these issues from air-conditioned offices over lattes and dashboards of metrics, we risk losing sight of what really matters — and how complex systems operate on the ground. To understand how to deploy capital effectively, we must understand how energy is generated and distributed, how nature-based solutions function in reality, how local communities perceive interventions, and what real environmental impact looks like.

This requires deep, cross-disciplinary curiosity, empathy, and sometimes, risk-taking, not just financial modeling.

A case in point: the voluntary carbon market, especially in nature-based solutions. Success here depends on far more than technology or credit pricing. It requires a whole system of trust: from governments that can define credible baselines and issue policies, to investors who are willing to fund projects even when all the variables aren’t yet visible. But more importantly, it demands cultural intelligence: the ability to bridge Global North–South perspectives, understand local context, and co-create value across borders.

In many cases, the most transformative solutions arise when we courageously connect seemingly unrelated sectors — local landowners with international verifiers, policy negotiators with forest stewards, financiers with indigenous leaders. It is in these unlikely connections that true innovation happens.

This is why in the months ahead, I will explore what it takes to bridge these gaps — and how we can co-create systems that don’t just scale technology, but scale wisdom.

Is Singapore Ready — and How Can the World Help?

Let’s ask the deeper questions:

• Is Singapore nurturing the right ecosystem of talent, technology, and trust?
• What gaps remain in our education, training, and leadership pipelines?
• How can AI and cross-cultural leadership accelerate this transition?
• What frameworks from other countries could be localized and adapted here?
• How do we build shared standards, joint platforms, and mutual talent flows across the region?

Singapore’s ambition is clear. Its leadership is emerging. But ambition alone won’t shape the future — capacity will.

Useful links:

• Link up with Yingying Li on LinkedIn
• Read a related article: Social and Environmental Accounting: Measuring sustainability
• Subscribe to Yingtelligence and read more insights on AI, climate, and cross-cultural capacity building.
• Discover CoBS member school ESSEC Asia-Pacific, Singapore.

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