The Climate Governance Forum 2025 on 11th July 2025 saw a successful turnout of more than 170 board directors, business leaders, and sustainability experts.
Published 31 July 2025 –
The ongoing global ESG transformation and the role of Corporate Sustainability in driving climate action were the central focus of the recent Climate Governance Singapore Forum 2025 (CGS Forum 2025), co-organised by ESGpedia with the Singapore Institute of Directors (SID), Singapore Exchange Regulation (SGX RegCo), and the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA), which brought together leaders from regulation, industry, and finance to navigate this new terrain.
The forum convened at a time of divergent global currents, honing in on regional-specific opportunities, challenges, and nuances surrounding the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB, also known as IFRS S1 and S2) standards, ESG solutions, and the future of Corporate Sustainability.
While a changing political “mood music” in the West has seen the reversal of some climate policies and a slowing of regulatory implementation amid fears of the impact on business competitiveness, Singapore is charting its own clear and determined course forward.
The nation’s decisive adoption of the ISSB Standards for both listed and, eventually, private companies underscores an unwavering commitment to transparency and accountability, creating a new benchmark for corporate conduct.
The most significant development catalysing this shift is the resolution of the long-standing debate over ESG’s financial relevance. However, all those attending agreed that the question of value is no longer theoretical.
As Eliza Tan, Head of Sustainable Development Office and Head of IPO Admissions at SGX RegCo shared, “Companies which manage their sustainability risks and opportunities well can drive stronger financial and operational outcomes in the long run.”
Jessica Cheam, Founder and CEO of Eco-Business and Independent Non-Executive Director at Wilmar International and ComfortDelGro simply puts it: “Climate risks equals financial risks.”
The ESG Premium Continues to Fuel Corporate Sustainability
Panel Discussion 1 at the CGS Forum 2025: Understanding Climate Risk – Navigating Regulation and the Evolving Reporting Landscape, featuring Sunil Veetil from HSBC, Kuldip Gill from ACRA, Lean Min-tze from Baker McKenzie Wong & Leow, and Eliza Tan from SGX (left to right)
Compelling evidence was presented at the forum, including a study showing a 3.6% outperformance by the FTSE ASEAN for Good index against its standard counterpart between 2022 and 2025, a tangible “ESG premium”.
This is supported by a detailed Bloomberg Professional Services analysis which found that global companies with higher ESG scores consistently generated superior portfolio returns, with the Governance pillar proving to be a particularly potent driver of this alpha.
Such data solidifies the principle that “climate risk equals financial risk,” a concept championed by leading board members as a foundational truth. It recasts ESG from a potential cost centre into a strategic lever for winning business.
Panel Discussion 2 at the CGS Forum 2025: From Disclosures to Climate Action – The Role of Board Directors in Driving Change Through Innovation and Green Technologies, featuring Sammie Leung from PwC Singapore, Jessica Cheam from Eco-Business, Grace Ho from MTQ Corporation, Benjamin Soh from ESGpedia, and Tan Lay See from Durapower Group (left to right)
Jessica Cheam, Founder and CEO of Eco-Business and Independent Non-Executive Director at Wilmar International and ComfortDelGro shared tangible examples are already proving this thesis: ComfortDelGro secured a major tender to operate electric buses in Manchester in the UK precisely because of its sustainability edge due to its established expertise in electrification.
Meanwhile, agricultural giant Wilmar International transformed its robust no-deforestation policy from a response to criticism into a key competitive advantage, making it a preferred supplier for discerning global clients, and ensuring its readiness for new European regulations and rising demand for sustainable procurement.
This value proposition is set to become even more direct, as financial institutions have indicated that climate risk data will likely be integrated into their credit risk models within the next five years, creating a direct pricing advantage for companies with strong sustainability credentials.
Yet, as the financial rewards become clearer, Kuldip Gill, Assistant Chief Executive of the Accounting Development and Regulatory Group at ACRA, points out that the path to achieving them has grown more rigorous. The move from a voluntary and often confusing “alphabet soup” of standards to the mandatory ISSB framework represents a formidable operational gauntlet for most organisations.
Regulators acknowledge the significant hurdles companies face, from the sheer technical complexity of interpreting the new standards to the challenge of quantifying the financial impacts of climate risks, a task which demands sophisticated, long-term scenario analysis.
These demands arrive amid significant resource constraints in both the talent required to manage this transition and the investment needed to upskill teams across multiple corporate functions, including finance, legal, and procurement.
Driving Change: A Case Study in Effective Climate Change Management leveraging ESG Solutions
Faced with these immense challenges, the journey of Singapore-headquartered Durapower Group, a global leader in battery technology, offers a powerful case study in successful adaptation through its adoption of ESG solutions from ESGpedia.
The case study was launched at the Climate Governance Singapore Forum 2025, as a testament to the heightened competitiveness and operational efficiency Durapower Group gained from adopting digital ESG solutions. Read the full article or watch the video interview with Durapower Group.
As a green-tech company with a complex manufacturing supply chain spanning 25 countries including China, Thailand, and the Netherlands, Durapower Group moved from a cumbersome reliance on manual Excel spreadsheets to a fully digital platform, marking a significant step in its corporate sustainability agenda.
At the forum, Tan Lay See, Group CFO and Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) of Durapower Group, described the transformation as a “quantum difference,” but the most crucial change was strategic. The sustainability function was repositioned from a compliance obligation into a self-funding, value-creation engine.
This was achieved by leveraging government grants to offset initial investment and, critically, by integrating the sustainability team directly into the pre-sales and tender processes.
Through meticulously quantifying the revenue and profit margins from orders won specifically because of their demonstrated sustainability credentials, the sustainability team proved its direct contribution to the bottom line, effectively silencing any debate over its cost.
Durapower’s newfound success shone like a beacon of hope at the event, illustrating the profound and enabling role of technology in this new era. For large, complex organisations, digital platforms and ESG solutions provide the essential “plumbing” to consolidate disparate data streams into a single source of truth.
For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), technology serves as an enabler, demystifying sustainability by quantifying the benefits of practices they may already have in place, such as ensuring worker safety or using cleaner fuel.
Leading the Charge – The Boardroom’s Influence on Corporate Sustainability and ESG
This new reality places an unprecedented level of responsibility squarely in the boardroom, where directors must now move beyond traditional oversight to become literate in the nuances of corporate sustainability, climate science, and key sustainability reporting standards, such as ISSB, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), and more.
This is not merely a matter of best practice in corporate sustainability, but of legal and fiduciary duty; directors must be able to demonstrate that they have intentionally considered climate risks and opportunities in their strategic decision-making, a duty underscored by rising Directors & Officers insurance premiums in markets with increasing liability risks.
Closing address at the CGS Forum 2025 by Shai Ganu, Chairperson of the ESG Chapter at SID
The urgency of this new governance landscape is amplified by the undeniable physical realities of our changing planet. As emphasised in the forum’s closing address delivered by Shai Ganu, Global Leader of Executive Compensation and Board Advisory business at Willis Towers Watson (WTW) and Chairperson of the ESG Chapter at SID, the laws of physics do not participate in politics.
Humanity has already breached six of nine planetary boundaries, pushing us towards irreversible tipping points. The science is clear that even a complete cessation of emissions today would not reverse the trend; it would require thousands of years for the earth’s temperature to cool to pre-industrial levels.
This makes resilience and adaptation critical.
For every one-degree Celsius increase in temperature, the atmosphere holds approximately seven per cent more water vapour, meaning the severe storms and flooding events seen recently are not anomalies but a new climatic norm that boards must plan for, utilising innovative tools such as parametric insurance to manage risks that traditional policies do not cover.
The very concept of legal accountability is also expanding, with natural entities like rivers in New Zealand and Quebec now being granted legal personhood, giving them the right to take legal action against companies that act against their interests.
ESG Solutions Pave the Way from Murky Politics to Pure Physics
Green Technology Sharing at the CGS Forum 2025: “Beyond Compliance – The Business Case for Climate Action” by Benjamin Soh, Founder and Managing Director of ESGpedia
The digital approach not only automates complex greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions calculations and allows data to be seamlessly adapted for various reporting frameworks, but also unlocks tangible operational value, such as identifying faulty, high-emission equipment through cross-asset data comparison.
The direct link to financial reward is undeniable, with over 150 local SMEs cited at the forum having already leveraged such platforms. Examples include how ESGpedia has empowered several construction companies on their corporate sustainability journey to bolster competitiveness and secure more tenders, as well as enabled Ghim Li, a large fashion and textile corporation, to secure a SGD$16 million sustainability-linked loan from OCBC bank.
Even the “Achilles’ heel” of Scope 3 emissions, which can seem insurmountable, is being tackled through technology-driven supplier engagement and proactive strategies, such as negotiating future data-sharing requirements into long-term commercial leases.
Government support for the adoption of sustainability technology in Singapore has grown extensively in recent years, with incentives such as the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) offering up to 50% support for SMEs adopting ESGpedia, a Pre-Approved Solution under the IMDA SMEs Go Digital programme.
Ultimately, the collective insights from the forum paint a clear picture of the path forward. ESG is now a “whole of enterprise” journey, one that requires a deep-seated commitment from the boardroom down through every function of the business.
It is a journey of “progress rather than immediate perfection,” demanding robust governance structures to ensure accountability and strategic alignment.
The leaders of this new era will be those who master the “ABCs” of sustainability: Advocacy for its importance, Building the capability within their organisations, and fostering Connections for peer-to-peer learning.
Echoing the words of Sunil Veetil, Managing Director, Head of Commercial Banking Sustainability Asia Pacific at HSBC, “Sustainability is a long-term game for companies, and it would greatly benefit both SMEs and corporates to kickstart their sustainability efforts early.”
The most successful companies of the next decade will not have a separate sustainability strategy; they will have a single, integrated business strategy, driven by a unified stream of financial and non-financial data.
For them, capturing the proven returns of ESG excellence will not be a surprise, but the expected outcome of building a resilient, competitive, and valuable long-term effort.
To find out how ESGpedia’s end-to-end digital ESG solutions can accelerate your sustainability reporting and corporate sustainability journey, get in touch with our team today.
