What Enterprise Singapore Actually Changed on October 27

A renewable energy certificate bought outside Singapore can no longer back a company’s claim of using renewable electricity inside the country, under a revision to Singapore Standard SS 673 — the Code of Practice for Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), first introduced in 2021 — published by Enterprise Singapore on October 27, 2026. A REC is a tradable certificate representing the environmental attributes of one megawatt-hour of renewable electricity. The updated standard says a certificate can only support a market-based Scope 2 claim — the accounting method companies use to report the carbon intensity of the electricity they buy — if it is tied to power physically delivered into Singapore’s own grid.

Enterprise Singapore, the statutory board that develops standards on behalf of the government, ran the revision through the Singapore Standards Council, working with the Ministry of Energy, Trade and Industry and the Energy Market Authority (EMA), Singapore’s electricity and gas regulator. A public-private working group — government agencies, industry associations, renewable market participants and corporate REC buyers — drafted the amendments, which then went through public consultation before being finalised.

The Grid-Link Test an Overseas Certificate Now Has to Pass

Two categories of certificate now clear the bar: one tied to renewable generation inside Singapore, such as rooftop or floating solar, and one tied to an approved cross-border electricity trade (CBET) import project — a scheme under which Singapore buys power generated overseas and piped in through a physical grid interconnection. Singapore has already given Sembcorp Utilities conditional approval to import up to 1.3 gigawatts of renewable electricity from and through Malaysia under that framework.

A certificate from a solar farm in Malaysia, Vietnam or anywhere else that isn’t wired into Singapore’s grid through one of those approved routes can still be bought. Enterprise Singapore’s guidance says companies may use it to support renewable development and decarbonisation elsewhere in the region. What it can no longer do is sit in a Singapore entity’s own sustainability report as evidence that the electricity it drew from the grid was renewable. The standard is guidance, not statute — there is no blanket legal ban on buying an overseas certificate — but any company whose auditor or investor checks its Scope 2 claim against SS 673 now has a narrower set of certificates to point to.

The Malaysia Framework That Would Qualify More Certificates Is Three Days Old

The gap that leaves is wider than it might look, because the main pipeline for qualifying more overseas certificates was still being set up as SS 673 was revised. On the sidelines of Singapore International Energy Week 2026, held October 26 to 30, Malaysia’s Energy Commission and the EMA renewed a bilateral memorandum of understanding and, within it, formed a new joint working group tasked with harmonising how the two countries track and account for RECs tied to cross-border electricity trade, according to The Edge Malaysia’s October 26, 2026 report on the announcement.

“Close collaboration between regulators is essential to support a secure and reliable electricity supply,” Energy Commission chief executive Siti Safinah Salleh said, according to the same report. EMA chief executive Puah Kok Keong said clarity on a REC framework “across the whole of Southeast Asia will go a long way” toward encouraging renewable investment and trading. Neither official gave a date for when the framework would be finished. Malaysia has more than 8 gigawatts of installed renewable capacity, but under current rules its RECs cannot be sold overseas at all — the working group exists to change that, not to describe a system that already works.

So the sequence runs: on October 26, two regulators agreed to start studying how to make more overseas certificates eligible; on October 27, the standard that decides eligibility got stricter. The harmonisation work the second announcement makes more urgent is, as of this writing, exactly where the first announcement left it — a working group with a mandate and no finish line.

What a Building Owner or Data-Centre Buyer Should Check Before Its Next REC Purchase

For a Singapore-based REIT, data centre operator or multinational tenant that has been buying regional certificates to offset its electricity use, the revised SS 673 changes what those certificates are worth on paper, even if nothing about the physical power supply has changed. A Malaysian solar REC bought last quarter to support a Scope 2 claim in a Singapore sustainability report may still be a legitimate purchase, but it no longer does the job SS 673 now defines, unless it happens to be tied to an approved CBET project such as the Sembcorp import.

A procurement or sustainability team should ask three things before its next purchase: whether the certificate is domestic or tied to one of the handful of approved cross-border import projects; whether its current portfolio of overseas certificates is being used only for regional decarbonisation messaging rather than a Singapore-specific claim, now that the standard draws that line explicitly; and whether to wait on the Malaysia-Singapore working group before expanding exposure to Malaysian-sourced renewable power, given that the framework which would make those certificates count has no announced completion date. The 2026 consolidated edition of SS 673 becomes available for purchase from the Singapore Standards e-shop from mid-November; the amendment list itself is free.

Key takeaways

  • Enterprise Singapore revised SS 673 on October 27, 2026, so that only a renewable energy certificate tied to electricity physically delivered into Singapore’s grid can support a market-based Scope 2 renewable-electricity claim there.
  • An overseas certificate not tied to an approved cross-border project, such as most Malaysian or Vietnamese solar RECs, can still be purchased for regional decarbonisation purposes but can no longer substantiate a company’s own renewable-use claim in Singapore.
  • One day earlier, on October 26, Malaysia’s Energy Commission and Singapore’s EMA announced a joint working group to harmonise cross-border REC tracking — the mechanism that would qualify more overseas certificates — with no stated completion date.
  • Singapore has already conditionally approved a 1.3-gigawatt renewable import from Malaysia via Sembcorp Utilities, showing the approved-project route exists but remains narrow.
  • Companies holding overseas RECs for Singapore-based Scope 2 reporting should audit their certificate mix now rather than wait for the harmonisation framework, since SS 673’s tighter rule took effect before that framework exists.