1. Generally, a very significant increase in sustainable technology adoption because the cost has gone down significantly. There is increasingly a business case for adopting sustainable tech. Increasingly, going green is cheaper than staying brown.
2. The view of finance within the sustainability industry - Increasing amounts of emphasis on incorporating climate risk within financial portfolios
3. Regulatory - More enforcement to ensure that companies are responsible for their actions

We believe that the next generation of engineers would be the ones to make the use of renewable energy more widespread. So Sembcorp hopes to partner up with as many Institutes of Higher Learning (IHL) as possible.

For example, Sembcorp has partnered up with Singapore Polytechnic to set-up a solar panel recycling plant to recover up to 95% of materials.

1. Generally, I don't think there is really any shortage of opportunities. For example, helping with carbon capture, hydrogen as an energy source and etc.
2. The challenge is more on how do you define what is green? Different markets perceive green differently. Should we consider clean coal as a green product?
3. Additionally, there is a need to look at the social impacts of transitioning to renewable sources of energy too. If we were to phase coal out, millions of jobs would be lost.

ETran Mobility aims to focus on the following

1. Cleaner mobility
2. More efficient products
3. More equitable opportunities

In the automobile industry, you traditionally already need a lot of capital. Adding on the fact that we would like to remain focused on improving our triple bottom line (Planet, People, Profit) too, we realised that we needed to innovate on our business model.

As such, instead of selling our products ($5000 USD per bike) which would only be affordable to more affluent people, we decided to lease them out. Leasing out the bike costs as little as $3 a day, allowing us to get most of the ~600 bikes that we have produced thus far onto the road.

Well firstly, the good news is that the sustainability industry is a sunrise industry. What’s important is that you should not be afraid of your current major. So while there are no specific links that can be given now, do check out online job portals as there should be numerous opportunities available, regardless of your major.

Within Sembcorp specifically, if we were to focus on the engineering aspect, relevant skill sets include

1. Big data management (data science and analytics)

(A) Converting unstructured to structured data

(B) Making meaningful insights from the structured data

2. Cybersecurity

In short, there is an increasing need for engineering skills within the digital realm. These are the immediate skill sets that the team requires from an operational perspective.

In addition to hard skills, you also need a lot of soft skills because you are working on transformation. You are asking businesses to change and become more sustainable (which may not always be at the top of businesses’ minds or may not even be on their list of priorities!). Additionally, you may know what data you need but you do not always know where they are. You might need to engage with multiple different stakeholders to find and consolidate the data that you need.

To start, Singapore is one of the most highly solarised cities in the world.

Within industrial parks, roofs are actually ideal because they are large and the height of buildings are all pretty uniform. That said, we have to consider other surfaces like water bodies and temporary permanent land (land that is currently vacant but with pending development plans) if we want to become carbon neutral.

One project that we have embarked on recently is to integrate solar parks with a rainwater harvesting system (source). Through this project, we have managed to collect 68 Olympic-sized pools of water annually. The water is used to wash the solar panels and to cool them down. Solar panels like the sun but not the heat. Any remaining industrial parks that have yet to be solarised are likely because they are deterred by environmental policies.

Big corporations are already aware of the expectations of consumers and the government. They have done the first half which is to articulate why it is important and pick out the low-hanging fruits (leveraging solar panels that result in long-term cost savings to businesses).

Moving forward, big corporations have to increasingly invest in long-term technology and research which is harder because short-term profits would very likely be impacted.

At least within the sustainability industry, I would say that it is important for students to recognise their advantage - the ability to bring another perspective into the workforce and to have the courage to share it

1. Increase focus on sustainability regulatory framework in Southeast Asia.
2. A lot more alignment on sustainability ratings. Carbon markets would hopefully flourish too. 
3. Increase in emphasis and care on the social impacts of the sustainability industry.
4. A more integrated ASEAN - Both in terms of policy making and physically (connecting of pipes between different countries)
5. Increase focus on more challenging technologies (e.g. energy storage and hydrogen as an energy source)

As mentioned in a previous question, there’s no shortage of opportunities because the sustainability industry is a sunrise one. If you were not trained in science but still want to work in sustainability, you definitely still can get into it so long as you get familiar with key technical terms (and have the mindset of a lifelong learner).

Within Sembcorp in particular, there have been quite a few students who graduated with a degree in environmental science and who have gone on to work with financial products, engineering and sustainability reporting.