Transforming Southeast Asia: The Green Fuels Race

The launch of this report follows the announcement of key events impacting the global energy sector in 2023, such as COP 28, and accumulates the vast project experience by ADL.

Globally, there is currently an enormous, transformative shift away from fossil fuels, driven by the fundamental need to decarbonize, achieving the Net Zero mandates, as well as growing pressure from customers looking to embrace green alternatives.

Achieving effective decarbonization requires a profound shift in the entire ecosystem around fuel production, distribution, and usage. As part of this shift, CO2 can anchor new ecosystems, enabling the creation of net zero fuels, whether bio-based or hydrogen (H2)- and CO2-derived products. 

This shift provides opportunities for companies, customers, and societies across Southeast Asia (SEA) and will help SEA countries hit their wider decarbonization targets, particularly in crucial, hard-to-decarbonize, high-demand regional sectors, including aviation, shipping, and power generation.

It will also resolve pressing socioeconomic needs, such as reducing waste through reuse and investments in green fuel production and addressing the concerns of younger generations pushing to create a more sustainable world, both as consumers and entrepreneurs building sustainability start-ups.  

Understanding how to mitigate carbon emissions can unlock the broader universe of carbon transformation (CO2-to-X) and carbon capture and utilization (CCU)-to-X products, opening new possibilities for SEA and putting the region at the forefront of the global shift to decarbonization.

Technologies and processes like carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) and direct air capture (DAC) are central to this, lowering or eliminating greenhouse gases (GHGs), mitigating hard-to-abate emissions, and providing CO2 as a feedstock for green fuel production, while delivering the monitoring and measurement required for compliance, including the application of artificial intelligence (AI).

Successfully scaling such technologies across SEA is vital to providing the infrastructure for change.

Trung Ghi, Partner and Head of Energy & Utilities Southeast Asia said, “This shift makes understanding how to manage CO2 an economic, social, and political imperative for countries within SEA. To realize its potential, governments, regulators, and players across the value chain must act now to address the challenges, especially around cost, certification, and regulation that are holding back the ecosystem’s growth compared to other regions.

The transition requires concerted action on a regional, cross-industry basis that will enable companies to meet the changing needs of customers, preserve competitiveness, and transform regional economies through decarbonization.”