Singapore – The Institution of Engineers, Singapore or IES has launched the ‘IES Green Plan 2030’ – a slew of green initiatives to support Singapore’s sustainable development imperative.

The IES Green Plan 2030 was launched at its 56th Annual Dinner held on 17 January 2023 at Marina Bay Sands, by Ms Grace Fu, Minister for Sustainability and the Environment, and will help to strengthen the nation’s engineering capabilities to develop sustainability solutions to mitigate the impact of climate change and public health threats by aligning with the five key pillars of the Singapore Green Plan 2030 – City in Nature, Energy Reset, Sustainable Living, Green Economy and Resilient Future.

IES has laid out concrete engineering-centric action plans from 2023 to 2030 to support the Singapore Green Plan 2030. A key element of the plan is to equip Singapore’s engineers sufficiently to create new possibilities and value opportunities for the society, economy and environment, thus capitalising on the ingenuity inherent in the discipline to make use of technology to facilitate Singapore’s transformation into a climate-resilient nation-state.

In support of the focus on upskilling engineers in this space, IES has partnered SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) to release the Jobs-Skills Quarterly Insights (JSQI) in conjunction with the launch of the IES Green Plan. The publication highlights a suite of green skills highly sought after by employers from engineers for work related to sustainable practices. The top identified skills are energy management and audit, environmental sustainability management and sustainable engineering.

JSQI also observed an emergence of newer “green” roles in areas such as solar PV engineer and energy sustainability, requiring engineers to be well-versed in skills for the development of evolving clean technologies, harnessing clean energy, managing environmental sustainability, as well as in Internet of Things application, programming & coding, and big data analytics.

With the support of SSG and other partners, IES will continue to empower engineers through continuous skills development as well as professional certification programmes such as the IES Chartered Engineering certification schemes, and courses offered by industry bodies and institutes of higher learning (IHLs).

“Climate change is an existential threat to humankind but acknowledging the need to act is not good enough. We must act immediately. As engineers, we can contribute to the goals set in the Singapore Green Plan with our engineering expertise, innovations and creative solutions. It is with this objective in mind that IES has taken the initiative to develop the IES Green Plan 2030 in support of Singapore’s sustainability journey. It is a bold, yet necessary plan to act as a springboard for future green initiatives and inspire more engineers to step forward to contribute towards Singapore’s ambitions of a green future,” said Mr. Dalson Chung, President of IES.