“Moving Toward Net Zero: How SMEs can act now”
Bangkok 7th April 2022, The Clean, Affordable, and Secure Energy for Southeast Asia Programme (CASE) together with the stakeholders in Green Energy Network jointly organized an online Webinar and Panel discussion on “Moving Toward Net Zero: How SMEs can act now”
“In terms of net-zero commitments, we have seen huge improvements all across the board. On a political level, the Climate Change Conference COP26 at Glasgow last year saw several countries coming forward with commitments. Also, businesses have increased voluntary pledges. On an international level, companies from across all sectors have been announcing ambitious greenhouse gas reductions plans for quite a while. Sascha Oppowa, CASE Programme Coordinator, German International Development Agency (GIZ Thailand) addressed this during the opening session.
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in Thai’s economy. According to the report from The Asian Development Bank (ADB), there are 99.8% of 3 million registered businesses were SMEs and their economic contribution is nearly half of Thailand’s GDP.
“If we want to achieve the net-zero target, we crucially need to crowd-in SMEs”.
The webinar aims to share the lessons learned and knowledge to encourage SMEs business in Thailand to understand the fundamental of net-zero and why SMEs’ role is significant for the country to move forward to the carbon neutral’s goal.
The webinar invited 4 experts from the green energy network who expressed their concerns and recommendation to SMEs regarding the net-zero methodology and target. Starting from the representative from Thailand Gas Management Organization, Ms. Anothai Sangthong, Director of Carbon Market and Innovation Promotion Office gave an overview of Thailand’s greenhouse gas emissions in general and the milestones to become carbon natural in line with Thailand’s Prime Minister’s announcement of Thailand achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
“Thailand has already reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by around 17.49% which aligned with the National target,” said Ms.Anothai
Followed by the scenario from the business sector, shared by Mr. Boonrod Yaowapreuk from The Creagy Co.,Ltd. He emphasized that the world is starting to turn toward net-zero and the SMEs business could not only focus on a short-term profit but looking forward to understanding the business’s sustainability concept integrated into the grass root. “The future trend of the business needs to consider the impact on Environmental, Social and Economic as a whole.
Ms. Kulawan Supesunthorn the expert from PwC Thailand talked about how the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) are connected to the business, especially the SMEs. She addressed that it is crucial to make the consumers in Thailand understand the value of the sustainable business which comes with a high investment cost. “We need to make people value the business that creates less impact to environmental and make the world become a better world in every aspect, from social, natural to the economic, this initiative takes times but worth to start. The consumers’ point of view can drive the business to invest in sustainable activities, including the net-zero target.”
The road toward the energy transition requires collaboration from many sectors and stakeholders to join their efforts in many ways i.e., the development of clean energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the understanding of an economic fundamental under the sustainability methodology.
More about the Webinar: https://youtu.be/JMW2Nmpwy9Q
