A Review of the Status of Fossil and Renewable Energies in Southeast Asia and Its Implications on the Decarbonization of ASEAN

Abstract

The ten nations of Southeast Asia, collectively known as ASEAN, emitted 1.65 Gtpa CO2 in 2020, and are among the most vulnerable nations to climate change, which is partially caused by anthropogenic CO2 emission. This paper analyzes the history of ASEAN energy consumption and CO2 emission from both fossil and renewable energies in the last two decades. The results show that ASEAN’s renewable energies resources range from low to moderate, are unevenly distributed geographically, and contributed to only 20% of total primary energy consumption (TPEC) in 2015. The dominant forms of renewable energies are hydropower, solar photovoltaic, and bioenergy. However, both hydropower and bioenergy have substantial sustainability issues. Fossil energies depend heavily on coal and oil and contribute to 80% of TPEC. More importantly, renewable energies’ contribution to TPEC has been decreasing in the last two decades, despite the increasing installation capacity. This suggests that the current rate of the addition of renewable energy capacity is inadequate to allow ASEAN to reach net-zero by 2050. Therefore, fossil energies will continue to be an important part of ASEAN’s energy mix. More tools, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and hydrogen, will be needed for decarbonization. CCS will be needed to decarbonize ASEAN’s fossil power and industrial plants, while blue hydrogen will be needed to decarbonize hard-to-decarbonize industrial plants. Based on recent research into regional CO2 source-sink mapping, this paper proposes six large-scale CCS projects in four countries, which can mitigate up to 300 Mtpa CO2. Furthermore, this paper identifies common pathways for ASEAN decarbonization and their policy implications.

The Contribution of Carbon Capture and Storage to the Decarbonization of Coal-Fired Power Plants in Selected Asian Countries

“…For CO 2 storage readiness, the storage capacity should be large enough to store 100 years or longer of injection. We use the results of our previous studies − ,,− to determine the CO 2 storage capacity in three types of subsurface reservoirs: oil reservoirs, gas reservoirs and saline aquifers. In these studies, only major oil reservoirs with OOIP > 16 × 10 6 m 3 and gas reservoirs with OGIP > 20,000 × 10 6 m 3 are evaluated for CO 2 storage.…”

“…Using shared facilities and CO 2 pipelines and injection facilities will reduce the cost of CCS, as will be done in the CCS projects mentioned in the last paragraph. Policies can be enacted to encourage the establishment of such CCS corridors to enable such large-scale and even cross-border CCS projects, with cost reduced by economies-of-scale. ,− …”

Bioenergy updates and prospects for decarbonization in the ASEAN region: A review on logistical concerns and potential solutions

“…Coal is much cheaper, more reliable, and more abundant than the renewable counterpart, aside from the fact that some of the ASEAN nations have rich oil reserves for energy production (IEA, 2018 as cited by Ali et al, 2021;Lau, 2022;Li et al, 2020). At the rate bioenergy production is going relative to the fossil fuel production, the ASEAN region is expected to fall short of its target comprising of 70% (bioenergy and renewable energy) of the energy mix, which is needed to fulfill the SDG commitments by 2040 especially on decarbonization and net zero emission targets (Lau et al, 2022;Nepal et al, 2021). Energy transition toward the renewable energy sources is potentially to be weighed down by an energy dilemma in the ASEAN, especially that the economical energy form and energy preference in the ASEAN is yet in favor of the fossil fuels (Lau, 2022;Lau et al, 2022), but for environmental reasons, bioenergy is continually promoted as an imperative option to be taken seriously.…”

“…At the rate bioenergy production is going relative to the fossil fuel production, the ASEAN region is expected to fall short of its target comprising of 70% (bioenergy and renewable energy) of the energy mix, which is needed to fulfill the SDG commitments by 2040 especially on decarbonization and net zero emission targets (Lau et al, 2022;Nepal et al, 2021). Energy transition toward the renewable energy sources is potentially to be weighed down by an energy dilemma in the ASEAN, especially that the economical energy form and energy preference in the ASEAN is yet in favor of the fossil fuels (Lau, 2022;Lau et al, 2022), but for environmental reasons, bioenergy is continually promoted as an imperative option to be taken seriously. With this, fossil fuels will still remain an essential part of the ASEAN's energy mix in the coming years (Lau, 2022;Lau et al, 2022), despite the environmental commitments based on the SDGs.…”

A Decarbonization Roadmap for Taiwan and Its Energy Policy Implications

“…Table A1 lists a set of 20 decarbonization technologies for the power, transport and industry sectors, which have been discussed in recent publications [62][63][64]. In this study, we screen these technologies according to six categories (sustainability, security, affordability, reliability, readiness, and impact) to determine those with the most potential for Taiwan.…”