On 2 June Ricoh Asia Pacific held its Eco Action Day Virtual Dialogue Session gathering industry leaders, sustainability experts and government representatives to discuss how Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7: Affordable and Clean Energy can be achieved for all.
The virtual meeting replaced the annual physical roundtables in light of the social distancing measures. This platform seeks to strengthen corporate and governmental networks to overcome challenges in corporate decarbonisation and is part of Ricoh’s 14th annual Eco Action Day (EAD) campaign to “spur greater consciousness and actions for the environment.”
A total of 94 people participated in the Virtual Dialogue Session, including Guest of Honour, Mr Tan Kok Yam, Deputy Secretary, Smart Nation and Digital Government, and Strategy Group, Prime Minister’s Office. Ricoh reported that panel speakers from The Carbon Trust, Danfoss and SP Group shared their viewpoints on the opportunities and challenges in corporate decarbonisation, strategies to shrink companies’ carbon footprint, and regulations that prevent or accelerate the adoption of green technology.
Long-term supporters of Eco Action Day such as Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, Mitsubishi Electric Asia, Singapore Pools, PacificLight Power and Sunseap also attended the session, Ricoh said.
Guest of Honour, Mr Tan Kok Yam said: “Even as COVID-19 is disrupting our lives, the risks of climate change continue to loom in the background, threatening to become a disruption that is more lasting and more damaging. We should guard against climate action being sidelined due to the pandemic. Instead, we need to work together, as community, business and Government, to tackle climate change and raise our environmental resilience.”
Mr J.D. Kasamoto, General Manager of Service & Environment, Ricoh Asia Pacific, commented: “While held through virtual means, this year’s dialogue is just as, if not, more important than ever during this challenging time of COVID-19. We thank all for their participation and allowing us to dig deep into high-level issues of corporate decarbonisation. In fact, the participants agreed that climate change is a long-term existential threat that needs to be addressed through collective efforts.”
Ms Jessica Cheam, Founder and Managing Director, Eco-Business, remarked: “We are delighted to partner with Ricoh again to convene one of Singapore’s foremost conversations on sustainability. This COVID-19 crisis has shone a harsh spotlight on humanity’s relationship with the natural world and also revealed gaps in our social safety nets. Amid this pandemic, climate change is in danger of being pushed off the priority lists of governments and corporations around the world, but in order to build a resilient future, we need to move with urgency to tackle climate issues.”
“We had a successful dialogue in which we discussed how government, businesses and wider society can work together to achieve decarbonisation, urgently and at scale, amid our current challenges. It was a fruitful discussion that produced some findings that we can all take away into our organisations and in our work,” she added.
Clean energy was chosen as the topic for this year’s discussion due to its growing pertinence in Singapore and internationally. The Singapore government announced plans to produce enough solar energy to meet at least 10% of peak daily electricity demand by 2030. It also announced plans to halve 2030 peak greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and phase out all fossil fuel vehicles within the next two decades.
Globally, there is an ever pressing need to ramp up the proportion of renewable energy use. Research has shown that renewable energy must reach 70-85% of the global energy mix by 2050 to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C in this century and we are only at 25% today.
Launched since April this year, the pledge campaign encourages organisations, schools and individuals to commit simple actions over two months to reduce their environmental impacts. Ricoh has since collected 142 pledges from corporate and schools, which it will match with the same amount of natural gas carbon units from an electricity plant on Jurong Island. This has approximately equated to 261,259 kWh of energy savings and a combined 109,415kg of carbon dioxide emissions.
Ricoh said it will mark the end of its EAD 2020 campaign by partnering with Community Development Councils, Sustainable Singapore Gallery and schools to distribute gardening seeds to the community. Ricoh hopes this will urge Singaporeans to shift towards more sustainable production and consumption, reducing reliance on agricultural imports and minimising carbon emissions, in line with Singapore’s 30-by-30 vision to increase local food production by 30% by 2030.
