Take-up Rates among Smaller businesses and Building Owners for Energy Efficiency Fund and Green Mark Incentives Compared with Larger Businesses

Mr Leon Perera asked the Minister for Sustainability and the Environment (a) how do the take-up rates among smaller businesses and owners of small buildings for the Energy Efficiency Fund and Green Mark incentives compare with those for larger companies; and (b) whether the Government has studied the possibility of creating an additional grant tier to further incentivise such small businesses and owners of small buildings to take up these schemes.

The Industry Energy Efficiency Package for the adoption of energy efficiency technologies was launched in 2019 to help companies become more energy efficient. Under this package, the Energy Efficiency Fund (E2F) supports smaller manufacturing companies with annual group sales turnover of less than S$500 million. To date, 24 applications have been approved under the E2F.

The Green Mark Incentive Scheme for Existing Buildings & Premises (GMIS-EBP) was a five-year $50 million incentive scheme that has been fully committed and expired in 2019. The scheme provided grants to both building owners and tenants to undertake energy efficiency works. Under this scheme, more than one-third of the approved applicants were small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The remaining grants were awarded to building owners where at least 10% of their tenants were SMEs.

To provide stronger support for the smaller companies, a number of enhancements have been made to the E2F grant. First, from 1 April 2022, the maximum E2F grant support cap for adoption of energy efficient technologies has been raised from 50 to 70 per cent of the qualifying costs per project. Second, the E2F grant application and disbursement processes have been streamlined and improved to help smaller companies save time and cost. Third, we are working with the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) to strengthen the Energy Efficiency Technology Centre (EETC), which supports SMEs with low-cost energy assessments to identify opportunities to improve energy efficiency.

In addition, the recently-announced Energy Efficiency Grant will also provide support for local SMEs in the Food Services, Food Manufacturing and Retail sectors looking to adopt energy-efficient equipment in pre-approved categories.

The incentive schemes will continue to be reviewed from time to time to broaden take-up by companies. The industry is encouraged to take advantage of these schemes to raise their energy efficiency levels, reduce energy consumption and reduce their cost of doing business.