Research Database

The Southeast Asian region (SEA) is surrounded by ocean space, from which there is a vast potential to harness energy. Wave, tidal energy, and ocean thermal energy conversion could be tapped, to provide alternative sources of clean and dependable energy in the region. This article contributes to the growing academic literature on ocean renewable energy (ORE) in SEA by improving understanding of the opportunities and challenges of ORE development in the region, beyond its technical aspects. It conducts a critical analysis of the socio-political aspects of ORE development at a regional scale, which have been less studied in the existing literature. Aside from providing a sustainable energy source, the development of the ORE sector could provide socio-economic benefits to SEA countries through employment opportunities, inter-industry learning, inbound investments and improving economic resilience. However, these benefits can only be maximised if the costs of deployment, maintenance and repair are reduced, the impact to the marine environment is taken into consideration and issues of public acceptance are addressed. Beyond a cost–benefit analysis, this study critically assesses the unintended risks and consequences of ORE technologies and activities in the region and recommends different policy strategies to mitigate them. It concludes that for the region to reap the benefits of ORE, a coordinated approach among different stakeholders (technology developers, policymakers, and end-users) is needed to minimise the risks and unintended consequences.

Scholars and policy-makers agree that cross-border and multi-sector cooperation are essential components of coordinated efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 infections. This paper examines the responses of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nation) member countries to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the limits of regional cooperation. ASEAN has pre-existing cooperative frameworks in place, including regional health security measures, which, at least theoretically, could assist the region's efforts to formulate cooperative responses to containing a global pandemic. With its overarching “One Vision, One Identity, One Community”, ASEAN cooperation has extended to include region-wide disaster responses, framed as “One Asean, One Response”. Using content analysis, this paper examines media statements and policies from ASEAN member states and the ASEAN Secretariat to assess the collective response to COVID-19 during the period from January to August 2020. By identifying gaps and opportunities in government responses to COVID-19 as the virus spread throughout Southeast Asia, this paper provides new insights as well as recommendations for the future.

Singapore is an island city state. It lacks conventional energy resources and is alternative energy disadvantaged. Yet its aggregate carbon intensity, given by the ratio of carbon emissions to GDP, dropped by 30% from 2005 to 2014. Currently it has a relatively low carbon intensity. Using I-O analysis, we study Singapore’s aggregate carbon intensity and the factors contributing to its changes at different levels, i.e. final demand, sector, and transmission levels. It is found that domestic exports accounted for nearly two-thirds of Singapore’s aggregate carbon intensity, followed by private consumption and investment. At the sectoral level, the top three contributors were the petroleum, petrochemical, and land transport sectors. Improvements in emission intensity and final demand structure were major factors contributing to reductions in carbon intensity. Our study contributes to the literature in two aspects. Methodologically, it deals with embodied emission intensity and analyzes its changes from the demand perspective. This differs from most studies in the literature from the production perspective. Empirically, the findings and policy implications are unique as they are applicable to a major city. With urbanization taking place in many developing countries, cites’ role in emissions and environmental sustainability are growing in importance but not many in-depth analyses similar to our study have been reported.

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report notes the importance of mobilising green finance in order to limit global warming to 1.5°C and prevent catastrophic climate change. Fully implementing the Paris Agreement to meet this climate target will require US$ 1.5 trillion in green financing annually through 2030, according to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. At the same time, raising green finance is key to meeting Asia’s surging energy demand, which is fuelled by economic growth, population growth, and enhanced energy access. Two-thirds of global energy-demand growth will occur in the Developing Asia by 2040. Therefore, scaling up green finance in Asia is needed.

Mobilizing private finance for renewable energy and energy efficiency is critical for Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) not only for the reduction of global temperature rise but also for meeting fast-growing energy demand. Two-thirds of green bonds issued in ASEAN were used to finance renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. This paper provides a review of green bond issuance and green bond policies in ASEAN. Issuance of green bonds in top three green bond issuing countries in ASEAN, i.e. Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, are reviewed in detail. Green bond policies in ASEAN are effective in promoting green bond issuance. However, this does not mean that green bond policies are effective in promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in ASEAN. Proceedings of green bonds issued in ASEAN can be used for financing projects abroad or re-financing past loans, thus do not necessarily promote green investments in ASEAN.

This study examines the relationship between energy consumption, financial development and economic growth for ASEAN-5 countries, namely Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, over the period from 1980 to 2017. Finance–growth and energy–growth relationships have been well researched; however, the energy–finance–growth nexus is an equally important but less explored area. Our Auto Regressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) bounds test for cointegration results suggests that the variables tend to move together in the long run for all countries, apart from Indonesia. Our study also considers the effect of a structural break due to financial crisis and confirms that the break does not affect the long-term relationship among the variables; in other words, the financial crisis does not affect the energy–finance–growth nexus. Hence, considering the consistency of energy consumption, the importance of the energy sector must not be undermined, and appropriate energy policies are instrumental in maintaining a well-managed financial sector for sustainable economic growth.

We re-examine the relationship between CO2 emissions, energy consumption (EC) and economic growth (GDP) for the five main Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN-5) countries over the period 1980–2016. Our main contention is that the findings in previous studies that have examined the relationship between CO2, EC and GDP in the ASEAN-5 are biased because they fail to account for cross-sectional dependence (CD). We show that conventional tests applied to our dataset suggest a misleading conclusion about the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) and Granger causal relationship between CO2, EC and GDP in the presence of CD. When we apply a new panel test of Granger non-causality that addresses CD and heterogeneity, we find considerable heterogeneity. We find unidirectional Granger causality running from GDP to CO2 for Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand; unidirectional causality running from GDP to EC in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand; unidirectional causality running from EC to GDP in Singapore and bidirectional causality between GDP and EC in the Philippines. We also find support for the EKC hypothesis for the ASEAN-5 countries.

Urban heat island (UHI) can be described as characteristics of warmth for both the atmospheres and surfaces in cities compared to rural surroundings. The attention on UHI has helped to advance the development of urban cooling strategies in Singapore. However, these strategies are often implemented at different levels with different mechanisms, and studies on the environmental implications of these strategies are often segregated. Therefore, understanding on how the urban canopy works is vital to analyse the energy performance, because canopy modelling is significant in estimating urban weather conditions, which affects the heat gain intake for buildings. It is thus become imperative to develop an integrated model for accurate prediction of weather conditions at different scales. By utilizing the Virtual Singapore (VSg) database, this study explores the development an integrated simulation platform, named BESCAM, for climate assessment and district energy demand. It focuses on urban canopy modelling and building energy simulation. The approach is to use CityGML from VSg as input, which comprises converted Building Information Modelling (BIM) buildings. Then, an urban canopy modelling (UCM) is developed to assess the microclimate condition with urban morphology consideration. Afterwards, building energy simulation can be conducted consecutively using EnergyPlus by integrating microclimate and building information. Hence, the BESCAM platform would offer a unique opportunity to architects, engineers, and scientists to use the same source of information, using VSg database, for conducting their own analysis and compare their conclusions.

Southeast Asian governments have maintained “energy self-reliance” and “energy security” as essential rationales of their macroeconomic policy. Since the availability of energy remains necessary for unabated domestic growth and development, the pursuit for “alternative” sources of energy and the resolve to build sustainable energy systems are constant priorities. Informed by the literature on policy discourse, this article draws attention to the analytical use and significance of policy discourse as a means to examine sustainable energy policies in Southeast Asia, which dominantly adopted an economic lens for “energy supply security.” Policy documents were examined to show the congruence and variation of policy discourses that prompted the governments of Indonesia, the Philippines, and Singapore to institutionalize sustainable energy development from 2000 to 2016—a critical period for the institutionalization of sustainable energy in the region, when domestic renewable energy sectors and systems were simultaneously being established by these governments.