2026 NTU Sustainability Conference featuring keynote address by Mr Eric Lim, Chief Sustainability Officer at UOB

Nanyang Business School (NBS) hosted the landmark 2026 NTU Sustainability Conference (previously the NTU Decarbonisation Forum) on 22 September 2026, convening prominent leaders from finance, major corporations, government agencies, and academia to address the practicalities of the low-carbon transition. Jointly presented by the Centre for Sustainable Finance Innovation (CSFI) and the upcoming Global Institute for Impact and Sustainable Finance, the hybrid event took place at the auditorium in Wee Cho Yaw Plaza and online, establishing a vital collaborative space to examine how cross-sector cooperation, targeted financial instruments, and commercial strategy can convert high-level climate commitments into actionable operational practices.

Reframing Net Zero as Economic Policy

Following welcome remarks from Professor Jun Yang, Dean of Nanyang Business School, the conference opened with a keynote address by Mr Eric Lim, Chief Sustainability Officer at UOB, titled Transitioning to Net Zero: Challenges and Opportunities.

Mr Lim opened by polling the audience on whether sustainability was in retreat or growing stronger, observing that both perspectives hold truth. While traditional environmental framing has faced headwinds, the transition itself has entered a more mature, commercially grounded phase.

The core challenge put forward was whether the global community has spent more than a decade misrepresenting net zero by relying almost exclusively on environmental imperatives such as carbon budgets, the 1.5°C target, and extreme weather risks. While the underlying climate science remains unchanged, environmental arguments alone face clear limits when governments must address cost-of-living concerns, power prices, and employment, and when developing economies seek higher standards of living.

The next phase of the net-zero transition has evolved into an entirely different conversation. The transition becomes far more powerful when environmental outcomes and commercial incentives point in the same direction. By shifting the focus away from moralising climate action and onto the underlying economics, sustainable choices become self-sustaining. Whether a household installs solar panels to lower electricity bills, a firm improves energy efficiency to boost profitability, or a consumer purchases an electric vehicle (EV) for its technology, the atmosphere benefits solely from the physical reduction in emissions.

Energy Security and ASEAN's Economic Reality

For Southeast Asia, where rising living standards drive expanding demand across transport, cooling, manufacturing, and digital services, decarbonisation cannot be treated as a single-dimensional effort to burn fewer fossil fuels. Instead, it requires building a resilient, interconnected energy grid.

Dependence on imported fossil fuels exposes ASEAN economies to volatile global markets and geopolitical tensions. At current prices, oil and gas imports add an estimated USD 3.4 billion per month to the region’s import bill. Developing domestic renewable energy sources, such as solar PV and battery storage, serves as vital energy security infrastructure that insulates economies from external shocks while retaining economic value locally.

Over the past decade, the energy sector has created approximately 800,000 jobs across Southeast Asia. The region has also positioned itself as a key manufacturing hub for clean technology, critical minerals (such as nickel and cobalt), solar PV, and battery production. Notably, ASEAN now accounts for over half of China's overseas EV manufacturing capability, with Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia taking active roles.

Tipping Points, Physical Risk, and the Role of Finance

Mr Lim noted that new-build solar has become the lowest-cost power generation option across much of Southeast Asia, with Indonesia being one of the few exceptions due to its significant domestic coal reserves. Solar installations also offer faster execution, with lead times of two to five years compared to longer development timelines for gas-fired power plants.

This cost advantage creates self-reinforcing market adoption. Rather than measuring financial success solely by the volume of green-labelled finance, the primary role of the financial sector is to help clean technologies and infrastructure transition from technical viability to commercial scale. Commercial banks, development finance institutions, and governments must allocate risk appropriately. Blended finance can de-risk early-stage projects, but long-term success occurs when initiatives no longer require subsidies and can attract private capital at scale based on commercially compelling returns.

Singapore's rapid adoption of electric vehicles illustrates how quickly commercial viability, policy alignment, and consumer choice can converge. In 2026, electric vehicles accounted for almost 65% of new car registrations in Singapore, overtaking internal combustion engine and hybrid vehicles for the first time. EVs now represent close to 1 in 10 vehicles on Singapore's roads, supported by a dramatic expansion in consumer choice from four registered EV brands a decade ago to 42 brands in 2026.

However, creating new economic value is only half the imperative; organisations must also protect existing assets from physical climate risks. The world's largest publicly traded companies are projected to face a combined USD 1.2 trillion in annual physical risk costs by the 2050s, with extreme heat, water stress, and drought accounting for 90% of this total. Furthermore, global insurers have recorded insured losses from natural catastrophes exceeding USD 100 billion annually for six consecutive years. Adaptation and resilience investments are therefore essential operational strategies to preserve business continuity and protect long-term capital.

Moving from Alignment to Execution

Building on the keynote, the afternoon session transitioned to sector-specific implementation, featuring three expert panel discussions that highlighted key industrial and financial levers:

Panel 1: Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration in the Apparel Sector

Moderated by Associate Professor Matthew Dearth from NBS, the panel featured Jens Aas (Senior Manager, Supply Chain Sustainability, VF Corporation), Kevin Tan (UOB), and Nicole van der Elst (VDE Consultancy). The speakers discussed supply chain decarbonisation in textiles and fashion, focusing on how brands, suppliers, and financial institutions can align incentives to tackle carbon emissions across global supply networks.

Panel 2: Bridging the Climate Technology Commercialisation Gap

Moderated by Anson Liang from NTU, this session examined pathways for scaling clean technology from research laboratories to commercial deployment. Panellists Anselm Ang (A*STAR), Colin Peh (Founder & Managing Director, GoRentalSG), and Mike Lim (Partner, TRIREC) discussed risk-sharing mechanisms, regulatory frameworks, and private capital structures required to bridge early-stage funding gaps.

Panel 3: Impact Investing

Moderated by Assistant Professor Zhimin Chen from NBS, the final panel examined how capital is directed toward measurable social and environmental outcomes across private equity, blended finance and impact bond markets. Panellists Koh Lin-Net (Temasek Trust & CIIP), Sugandhi Matta (ABC Impact), Rob Kaplan (Circulate Capital) and Robert Kraybill (Impact Investment Exchange) distinguished impact investing from sustainable investing, examined social outcomes beyond decarbonisation such as gender equality and financial inclusion, and debated how impact is measured, verified and reported alongside commercial returns.

Ultimately, the overriding message of the conference was that Southeast Asia’s transition will succeed not by asking economies to compromise growth for climate goals, but by decarbonising through economic development itself. When financial structures, corporate strategies, and academic research align to make low-carbon choices the superior economic option, climate action becomes self-sustaining and durable.

 

Note: This article highlights the strategic themes from the keynote address at the 2026 NTU Sustainability Conference. Over the coming weeks, we will be publishing executive summaries exploring the discussions from each of our three expert panels.