ComfortDelGro to invest S$50m in clean-energy technology

COMFORTDELGRO (CDG) is committing S$50 million to clean-energy technology and research over the next five years.

In a newly-inked Memorandum of Understanding with the National University of Singapore (NUS), CDG will invest about S$10 million in a mobility-focused CDG-NUS Smart & Sustainable Mobility Living Lab, CDG said in a statement on Tuesday.

The lab will focus on energy sustainability, integrated urban mobility, as well as smart and intelligent mobility technologies. It will research, test and analyse mobility technologies to generate insights that could later be implemented in solutions for the mass market.

Further, CDG will seek to invest another S$40 million to replace its fleet of diesel buses with electric ones (which may be deployed in the NUS Kent Ridge Campus), and to support infrastructure and mobility technologies.

Concurrently, ComfortDelGro Engineering will look into the introduction of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure in the campus car parks.

The move to "electrify" Singapore's largest tertiary institution is part of the ComfortDelGro Group's plan to intensify its sustainability efforts, the group said in its statement. To this end, it is the first mobility operator in Asia, and one of eight Singapore companies to commit to the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi).

GET BT IN YOUR INBOX DAILY

Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.

Sign UpVIEW ALL

The SBTi, a collaboration among the Carbon Disclosure Project, the United Nations Global Compact, the World Wide Fund for Nature and the World Resources Institute, encourages companies in the private sector to set science-based emission reduction targets to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. One of these goals is to limit global warming to less than 2 deg C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5 deg C.

CDG aims to have its SBTi targets validated and approved over the next 24 months; these include transiting towards a clean-energy fleet, improving energy efficiency, adopting renewables and driving business innovation.

CDG's counter ended 0.59 per cent higher at S$1.70 at Tuesday's close of trading, before this announcement was made.