It was early 2016. In a 10th-floor meeting room at The Atrium@Orchard, the five pioneering members of Temasek’s Sustainability & Stewardship Group assembled for their first meeting. Coming from across its investment, corporate finance and legal teams, most had been drawn to the group by a concern for the planet.

The youngest among them was financial analyst Immanu’el Woo, a self-confessed numbers man whose decision to be there was driven more by vision than passion. Sustainability had dominated the headlines in the leadup to the signing of the Paris Accord at COP21 – it looked like a megatrend that was going to shake things up.

However, as the team took on issues like energy, overfishing, water security, and even the haze, he found himself increasingly vested, uncovering issues that struck deeply.

“Like many, I was most aware of things like recycling and planting trees, not decarbonisation and clean energy. It was also only after I became a sustainability practitioner that I realised that sustainability went far beyond protecting the environment, and had economic and social implications.

“You realise that we cannot go on as we are – that unsustainable ways of living create real and tangible problems, not just for people on the other side of the world, but also for us, our neighbours, our friends, our family. 

“I wanted to be part of the solution.”

A search for white spaces 

Part of the group’s mandate was to identify and invest in innovative technologies with the potential to drive the planet closer towards climate resilience, and Temasek towards a net-zero portfolio.

“Given the scale of the sustainability crisis, we didn’t know where to start,” Immanu’el recalls.

The team cast its net wide, exploring everything from sustainable aviation fuels to nuclear fusion, attempting to uncover white spaces that could be explored, whether now or in the future.

He remembers then-CEO Ho Ching addressing him during one of their meetings. “I was the youngest one in the team then, and she said that we needed more young people in our team because it was going to be up to my generation – and the ones that came after us – to take the possibilities of nuclear energy forward.

“I realised then that this was going to be a multi-decade-commitment, with an enormous potential for being a force for good.”

The team’s first task was to put in place a robust framework that could guide both investment and strategic decisions. “This levelled everyone up so we could drive the changes the world needed to see in a dedicated and measured way,” he says.

Immanu’el himself trained his focus on decarbonisation, and within that, low carbon hydrogen, a topic close to his heart. He animatedly explains how low carbon hydrogen is a critical part of Singapore’s future energy mix, given its limited access to renewable energy.

“We searched for under-addressed challenges and for potential solutions and policies that the firm could consider in its choice of investments. We had to think about why no one had solved them, and if they had tried and failed, then where the pitfalls lay.

“We went from problem to solution, then reverse-engineered our way back to better defining the problem. It was an iterative process.”

Impact, for generations

As the headlines around sustainability evolved over the years, so did the mandate of the Sustainability Group. It now comprises three sub-groups overseeing Sustainability & Climate Change Strategy, Ecosperity, a platform for engagement and advocacy, and Sustainable Solutions, which Immanu’el heads.

His focus is on solutions that could have a direct impact on Temasek and its portfolio companies. Immanu’el also doubles up as a Director of Emerging Technologies, which looks further into the future, at nascent deep-tech ideas that, with the right support – including from companies like Temasek – could evolve into commercially viable technologies with the potential to make a big difference.

“The challenge is that these technologies are almost always very new. Some of them may not exist at any sort of scale yet, and of those that do exist, some may not succeed. You have to scientifically and systematically predict if it’s going to work, how that might impact our businesses, and if that impact will be long term.

“That said, Temasek is in the business of looking around the bend, so you never get bored,” he says.

It is quite a change from what he envisioned himself doing, Immanu’el admits. In finance, “currency” is viewed solely in terms of returns, risks and time dimensions. Today, his focus is on how money translates into value, not just in the immediate future, but for future generations.

“The idea of being in a company that is only interested in profit now feels empty. The pre-Temasek Immanu’el might have been okay with that, but not anymore,” he says. “I’ve seen how Temasek puts time, money, commitment and people into bringing real value to communities, now and in the future.

“I’ve been infused with its DNA – and now I’m hooked.”