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

Hon Chung Lau, Kai Zhang, Harsha Kumar Bokka and Seeram Ramakrishna
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Hon Chung Lau: Low Carbon Energies, Houston, TX 77401, USA
Kai Zhang: Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada
Harsha Kumar Bokka: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Singapore, Singapore 117576, Singapore
Seeram Ramakrishna: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Singapore, Singapore 117575, Singapore

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 6, 1-30

Abstract: The ten nations of Southeast Asia, collectively known as ASEAN, emitted 1.65 Gtpa CO 2 in 2020, and are among the most vulnerable nations to climate change, which is partially caused by anthropogenic CO 2 emission. This paper analyzes the history of ASEAN energy consumption and CO 2 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 CO 2 source-sink mapping, this paper proposes six large-scale CCS projects in four countries, which can mitigate up to 300 Mtpa CO 2 . Furthermore, this paper identifies common pathways for ASEAN decarbonization and their policy implications.

Keywords: ASEAN; Southeast Asia; decarbonization; net-zero; carbon capture and storage; blue hydrogen (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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