Research Database

Pricing carbon is a widely used policy instrument for climate change mitigation. Quantitative analysis of carbon pricing are mainly conducted at the regional and national level, rarely at the city level due to data availability. As a representative of coastal megacities that are vulnerable to both climate change and climate policies, Singapore has announced to impose carbon tax on large direct emitters as a complementary mitigation option to technical measures. A city-level Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model is developed to simulate potential impacts of carbon pricing on the city, including paying border-carbon-adjustment (BCA) on exports or introducing a domestic carbon tax. Different sector coverages and carbon tax revenue recycling schemes are investigated for domestic carbon tax. The simulation results show that a domestic carbon tax is a more cost-effective option than paying BCA. Given an identical carbon price at S$10/t-CO2, GDP, total exports and household consumption would decline less and average abatement cost is much smaller in the carbon tax scenarios compared to the BCA scenario. In terms of absolute emissions reduction, a carbon tax that covers energy, manufacturing and land transport sectors would be preferred, making emissions around 2.7% lower than 2010 baseline level.

Subsidizing energy has been widely used but is economically unfavorable. The Malaysian government has shown strong intention to reduce energy subsidies recently, but face challenges to prepare policy instruments to manage the impact. This study develops a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model with breakdown of households by income level to evaluate the potential impacts of removing energy subsidies on the Malaysian economy. It is shown that removing petroleum and gas subsidy would improve economic efficiency and increase GDP up to 0.65%. Budget deficit would be largely reduced after removing the petroleum subsidies, especially when the saved subsidy cost is not budgeted for other expenditure. Households would be worse off in most scenarios due to higher price level, but some compensation policy could make the lowest income group no worse than baseline, without harm the economy. The reduction in carbon emissions ranges 1.84–6.63% in different scenarios. The simulation results suggest Malaysia to completely remove all fuel subsidies and use the saved funding to cut budget deficit or spend on education, health and other service sector. It is also necessary to set a compensation scheme to minimize public resistance and make sure such scheme is affordable.

In developing countries, industries and manufacturing sectors consume a major portion of the total consumption of energy, where most of the energy is used for low, medium or high temperature heat generation to be used for process applications known as process heat. The necessity to commercialize clean, cheap and efficient renewable sources of energy in industrial applications emerges from increasing concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and global warming and decreasing fossil fuel use in commercial sectors. As an abundant source of energy, solar energy technologies have proven potential. Recent research shows currently only a few industries are employing solar energy in industrial processes to generate process heat while replacing fossil fuels. Solar thermal power generation is already very well-known and getting popular in recent years while other potential applications of the concentrated heat from solar radiation are little explored. This review paper presents a detailed overview of the current potential and future aspects of involving solar industrial process heating systems in industrial applications. In order to keep pace with this emerging and fast growing sector for renewable energy applications, it is necessary to get in depth knowledge about the overall potential of industrial processes in individual industrial sector where solar process heat is currently in use and identifying industrial processes are most compatible for solar system integration depending on temperature level and the type of solar collector in use. Furthermore, the promising sectors needs to be identified for the use of solar heat using industrial processes for the integration of solar heat, so that countries with immense solar energy potential can use those technologies in future to reduce fossil fuel consumption and develop sustainable industrial systems. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the potential industrial processes that can adopt solar process heating systems and thus driving towards sustainable production in industries.

Emerging countries in Southeast Asia are facing considerable challenges in addressing rising motorisation and its negative impact on air quality, traffic, energy security, liveability, and greenhouse gas emissions. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the approach and status of sustainable, low-carbon transport policy in ASEAN countries and identifies differences and similarities. The methodology is based on a taxonomy of policy components as developed by Howlett and Cashore. The data come from comprehensive country studies for Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam and interviews with policymakers. We find that each country has a specific set of goals, objectives and targets that support sustainable transport, and, directly or indirectly, climate change mitigation. In terms of specific mechanisms and calibrations, which we analyse based on the Avoid−Shift−Improve approach, there are notable differences between the countries, for example in terms of fuel economy policy. Even though an initial response to climate change mitigation challenges is visible in these countries’ transport policies, much more effort is required to enable a transition to a transport system compatible with long-term climate change and sustainable development targets.

Singapore is an island city-state. It lacks conventional energy resources and is alternative energy disadvantaged. In the past decade (2000-2010), its energy-related carbon emissions increased from 37.8 to 44.4 million tonnes of CO2. This paper analyses the city state’s carbon emissions from the demand perspective using the input-output (I-O) method and investigate the drivers of emission changes using structural decomposition analysis (SDA). It is the first comprehensive analysis of Singapore’s emissions using the I-O framework. The results obtained show that exports accounted for nearly two-thirds of its total emissions and growth in its emissions in the last decade was largely export-driven. Emissions increased as export-oriented industries and export volume expanded. Fuel switching and energy efficiency, however, helped to lower growth in emissions. Besides exports, household-related emissions accounted for about a quarter of Singapore’s total emissions. The emissions related to different household groups remained fairly stable as increases in embodied (indirect) emissions were offset by decreases in direct emissions. The high-income household group registered the largest increase in direct emissions, while the middle-income household group registered the largest increase in embodied emissions. The policy implications of our findings are discussed.

The efficient utilization of clean energy resources to meet increasing electricity demand is imposing the integration of the electricity market and the construction of secure transmission mechanisms around the globe. Accordingly, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is integrating its large geographical power transmission infrastructure via the ASEAN power grid (APG). This study extensively reviews the energy resources (i.e., fossil fuels and renewables), the current utilization, and the future projection for ASEAN. Electricity export-import scenarios and renewable generation based transmission expansion planning practices in ASEAN will also be critically reviewed in this work. Additionally, the major barriers and technical challenges for establishing an ASEAN grid will be briefly analyzed. Finally, this work suggests possible techniques that help expedite the renewable power generations to overcome the limitations associated with the establishment of the APG, as well as future research direction in enhancing the utilization of APG for ASEAN.

We empirically examine the existence of an oil curse in the finance–growth nexus in Malaysia. We provide new insights into the oil curse phenomenon in Malaysia that challenges the conventional argument that Malaysia is a counter-example of an oil curse country. We do not find any significant evidence of direct effects of financial development on TFP. However, there are direct and positive effects on the level of investment due to financial development and oil dependence. While we do not find statistical evidence of a direct negative impact of oil rent on economic growth, our results reveal that the symptoms of an oil curse exist. Specifically, we find that oil rent has a weak, indirect, impact on the finance–growth nexus through the quantitative channel or investment quantity. The policy implications of our findings are that the financial sector should be more involved in productive investment activities that can strengthen its role in economic growth and that policymakers should reduce dependence on oil and promote economic diversification.

This paper assesses competing outlooks for energy mix in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), highlighting the paradox of its fossil fuel-dominated outlooks when contrasted with its aspirations to move toward a green energy mix, and reviews green energy strategies using the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis method. The paper argues that despite the looming brown outlooks due to the expected surge of coal, the ASEAN region has many advantages in providing cleaner energy for its green vision. However, reduction of CO2 emissions has not been explicitly set in the region’s policy agenda and thus green energy potential is underdeveloped. To achieve a greener energy mix, ASEAN needs to make further efforts such as cleaner use and removal of subsidies of fossil fuels, promotion of renewables and energy efficiency, regional market integration and connectivity, and execution of existing plans by nations. Ultimately, each of these strategies will require sustained leadership, political determination, and concrete actions from stakeholders, in particular, national governments across the region.