Kyte’s role in government aims to help the UK in its efforts to address climate change. Last year, the UK’s Labour Party scored its first general election victory since 2005. “This government came into power in July [2024] on the mandate — in its manifesto — [of] a really assertive commitment around a net-zero energy system by 2030, and also a vision that wanted to put climate and nature as a priority and at the heart of foreign policy.”
Kyte, formerly the World Bank Group’s vice-president and special envoy for climate change, was appointed in September 2024. Reporting to both the Foreign Secretary and Energy Secretary, she supports UK ministers in increasing their international diplomatic engagement on climate and clean energy, and helps accelerate progress on the UK’s climate objectives, among other tasks.
The following month, the UK government appointed Ruth Davis, who had advised the government when it hosted COP26 Glasgow in 2021, as special envoy for nature. The two envoys share an office, says Kyte to The Edge Singapore.
The UK set out its “Clean Power 2030 Action Plan” in December 2024, outlining its goal to meet Britain’s electricity demand with energy from clean sources by 2030.
See also: Dysfunctional boards: practical takeaways for directors
As at end-March, 61% of British electricity comes from clean sources. In 2023, clean power made up 92% of generation in Scotland, 57% in England, 43% in Northern Ireland and 34% in Wales.
“Our energy transition at home is the bedrock of a foreign policy [that] is not about ‘do as we say’, but it’s about ‘do as we do’,” says Kyte, who is also professor of practice in climate policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.
Kyte and her nature counterpart are now advising the UK government in exporting these priorities to the rest of the world. “[In] this new chapter of British foreign policy, this is the way to reset our relationships, to be fairer with developing countries, low-income countries [and] Small Island Developing States.”
See also: Half of Southeast Asian MSMEs plan to increase their ESG budgets by 2027: CIIP report
This “reset with the Global South”, says Kyte in an interview at Temasek’s Ecosperity Week 2025 on May 6, is about “our prosperity at home, linked to a clean energy system, and then being able to invest in the energy systems of other countries — it’s all part of a whole”.
Putting nature at the heart of foreign policy means the UK’s relationship with “forested countries” becomes “absolutely strategic”, says Kyte.
“That means that you have a strategic interest in the Amazon Basin, the Congo Basin [and] in Southeast Asia. That view that the foreign secretary has is starting to inform how we think about those parts of the world [and] also how we think about new instruments like… biodiversity credits [and] carbon credits. These become bigger and more important strategic tools.”
Southeast Asia deals
The UK government has invested in a range of assets in this region. Earlier this year, British International Investment (BII), the bilateral development finance institution wholly-owned by the UK government, jointly invested US$80 million ($103.39 million) with Temasek and HSBC joint venture Pentagreen Capital to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy in Southeast Asia.
Announced in March, the facility will fund the development and construction of utility-scale solar and battery storage projects developed by German firm ib vogt.
To stay ahead of Singapore and the region’s corporate and economic trends, click here for Latest Section
The initial US$80 million injection seeks to finance US$300 million of projects; starting with a 100 megawatt-peak (MWp) solar project in the Philippines.
In January, BII launched a utility-scale renewable energy platform alongside Dutch entrepreneurial development bank FMO and Swiss-based investment manager Susi Partners.
The Sustainable Asia Renewable Assets (SARA) platform aims to build a 500MW portfolio of greenfield renewable energy projects across select Southeast Asian markets.
SARA is established within the Susi Asia Energy Transition Fund (SAETF), which closed in 2023 at US$120 million and reopened in 2024 owing to strong demand.
BII and FMO invested US$70 million and US$50 million respectively through co-investment commitments to SARA and top-up commitments to the SAETF, which has doubled the size of its Southeast Asia-focused strategy to US$259 million.
To date, the fund has invested in Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia.
Looking ahead, BII’s 2022–2026 investment strategy includes a target to invest up to GBP500 million ($863.49 million) into climate finance in Southeast Asia.
In July 2024, the UK government, through its majority shareholding in the Private Infrastructure Development Group, provided a US$20.3 million guarantee for the mezzanine debt tranche in the Bayfront Infrastructure Capital V (BIC V) asset-backed securities transaction worth US$508.3 million.
BIC V is a wholly-owned distribution vehicle of Bayfront Infrastructure Management, a subsidiary of the Temasek-backed infrastructure credit financing platform Clifford Capital.
The transaction involves the securitisation of a portfolio of project and infrastructure loans and bonds into infrastructure asset-backed securities, also called “notes”. Investments in the equity tranche help attract other investors by ensuring that the listed debt instruments issued by the vehicle can attract appropriate credit ratings.
The investments even extend into the public markets. Launched in 2021, the UK’s Mobilist provides capital to catalyse IPOs in developing countries in order to scale private investment that supports development and the climate transition.
In June 2024, Mobilist invested US$12.5 million in the IPO of Citicore Renewable Energy Corporation (CREC) on the Philippine Stock Exchange. CREC is the second-largest solar energy generator in the Philippines in terms of installed solar capacity.
The Singapore Exchangehas partnered with Mobilist since 2022. In September 2023, Mobilist committed an anchor investment of up to US$20.4 million in preference shares in BIC IV, receiving a final allocation of US$5.0 million.
Countries must invest more of their own savings in the resilience of their own people, says Kyte. “In climate negotiations, the focus is always on the transfer of funds from the countries that caused the climate crisis to the countries that are experiencing it now. That commitment of the developed world to the developing world will remain, and we will not walk away from that. But the scale of the amount of investment that is needed means that we’re going to have to find ways to access all kinds of other forms of capital to make people safe.”
Singapore firms have also pledged to make investments in the UK.
In April, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) signed an agreement with the UK government to channel GBP10 billion of investment into British energy, infrastructure and real estate by 2030.
OCBC will also support UK businesses expanding into or establishing operations in Singapore and Southeast Asia.
This builds on the UK’s entry into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) free trade agreement last year.
According to the British High Commission in Singapore, the UK and Asia Pacific trading relationship is worth GBP125.7 billion, with UK-Singapore trade making up GBP22 billion of that.
Climate talks
Kyte has sat at various parts of the negotiating table at climate talks; she was once Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, focused on sustainable energy.
With the Trump administration again withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, Kyte is watching how other powers — the UK included — might step up.
“The question is: if the US starts to retreat from the multilateral development bank systems and international financial architecture, what role will other countries play if there is any vacuum created?”
That vacuum will be filled by China, the EU, the UK and even small island states, she adds. “These are the countries — Singapore and others — that understand the urgency of not slowing down.”
China “clearly” plays a “very important role” when it comes to pursuing sustainable development and “the transitions necessary to combat climate change”, says Kyte.
The UK has a multifaceted relationship with China, she adds. “On some things, we disagree; on some things, we agree. But in the zone of energy and climate, we have to continue to talk and talk more.”
The two countries signed in March a clean energy partnership agreement to cooperate on electricity market reform and a host of technologies, including battery storage, offshore wind and CCUS.
As Kyte stresses in her Ecosperity Week address, the UK is ready to “collaborate more radically” in order to “speed up the transition for everybody”. “Despite the fact that we can easily be distracted by the geopolitics, we know that the long-term trends are still underway, and it is a question simply of scale and pace.”
Photo: Ecosperity Week 2025
