The map-based database models and charts the technologies countries need to reduce emissions by a specific amount. - ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO
SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/ANN): Recognising that planet-warming greenhouse gases transcend national boundaries, researchers and experts are expanding a digital atlas to spur more countries to work together to achieve their net-zero emission targets.
The Global Mitigation Potential Atlas is being extended to include countries beyond South-east Asia, enabling it to model potential collaborations and develop innovative frameworks for cross-regional partnerships.
Such collaborations include imports of green electricity and ammonia, especially for countries with limited renewable resources.
The map-based database models and charts the technologies countries need to reduce emissions by a specific amount, and the estimated investments needed.
The tool underscores how collaboration in some cases can lower the costs needed for the same amount of reduction in emissions, said Dr Aniq Ahsan, founder of Singapore-based carbon consultancy Moya Analytics.
In other cases, the costs will be the same, but there is greater potential to slash emissions further, he added.
Moya Analytics, an upcoming spin-off of A*Star, is co-leading the project with Berlin-based non-profit Climate Analytics.
A screenshot of the web-based atlas. Nine South-east Asian countries have been mapped, with ways for them to reduce carbon emissions charted. -- PHOTO: SCREENGRAB FROM GLOBAL MITIGATION POTENTIAL ATLAS
They are heading a global consortium that built the atlas, including A*Star and Indonesian energy think-tank Institute for Essential Services Reform.
The digital tool is designed to help decarbonise the carbon-intensive power sector and hard-to-abate processes that rely on high-temperature industrial heating – especially in the cement, steel and chemical industries.
Launched in 2023, the project involves nine South-east Asian countries, including Singapore, and has modes of collaboration mapped out. By end-December, 10 more countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America will be added to the atlas, including South Korea, Brazil, Kenya and Nigeria.
If South Korea were to collaborate with Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines to get to net-zero, the project costs – including undersea cables for electricity transmission and wind farms – will be lower than if South Korea were to rely on its domestic measures alone.
The atlas found that if each of the countries decarbonises in silo, the total costs will be about US$150 billion (S$202.5 billion) a year. With collaboration, all the countries will fork out about US$110 billion a year, about a 30 per cent reduction. Each renewable project is estimated to run for 30 years.
How the countries split the cost will be up to them, said Dr Ahsan, stressing that the tool does not dictate how multilateral partnerships should work.
“The point of (the atlas) is to quantify the large benefits to get countries on the discussion table,” he added.
In the proposed South-East Asian partnership with South Korea, the tool suggests the bulk of the green electricity would come from offshore wind in Indonesia in the initial years before onshore wind farms are ramped up.
Dr Aniq Ahsan (left) and Dr Michiel Schaeffer, lead science adviser at Climate Analytics, making a presentation on the atlas at the Singapore Pavilion at COP29 in November. -- PHOTO: COURTESY OF ANIQ AHSAN
Undersea cables for green electricity transmission would link Indonesia and the Philippines, and South Korea and the Philippines. To shave off the last of the emissions before reaching net zero, more advanced technologies like the use of ammonia as a hydrogen fuel carrier would be utilised.
By July 2025, another 10 countries – this time high-emitting ones like the US, China and Australia – are expected to be added to the portal. The eventual aim is to grow the database to reflect mitigation data and potential around the world.
This expansion of the atlas was announced in the Singapore Pavilion at the UN climate summit COP29 in Azerbaijan on Nov 15.
At the event centred on climate mitigation, Professor Jim Skea, head of the UN climate science body, said the biggest-ticket item that will help countries decarbonise is renewable energy, but renewables and well-connected power grids now are concentrated in three parts of the world – China, North America and Europe.
“There is a big need to expand renewables to other parts of the world and think about ways to overcome barriers,” he said. “The cost of capital is higher in many developing countries... We also need innovative financial mechanisms that will lower the cost of capital and leverage private financing.”
This is where the atlas could come in to show the potential and benefits of cross-border partnerships.
Indonesia has a total wind energy potential of 155 gigawatts (GW), but only 154.3 megawatts of onshore wind farm capacity was installed as at mid-2024, representing less than 0.1 per cent of the total potential.
At COP29, Indonesia pledged to build 75GW of renewable power in the next 15 years.
At the Nov 15 event, Mr Benedict Chia, director-general of climate change at Singapore’s National Climate Change Secretariat (NCCS), said: “(The atlas should) go beyond just a nice electronic tool that you can click on. We want this to translate to actual action on the ground... to better support decision-making, and to give corporations greater assurance to invest in a certain country.”
NCCS is a funder of the atlas.
To turn the atlas into action, the team behind the tool will conduct a workshop for Asean policymakers, energy modellers and experts at a meeting in Bali in February 2025. It aims to conduct in-depth modelling, explore collaborations and recognise countries’ different circumstances, said Dr Ahsan.
For Singapore, which does not have many renewable resources, clean electricity imports from the region are a key driver for decarbonisation. For South-east Asia, the atlas offers a glimpse of what the Asean power grid – for electricity trade across borders – could look like.
The Republic is laying the groundwork for the regional grid by committing to import 5.6GW of clean electricity from Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia.
Singapore has also given a conditional nod to import 1.75GW of solar power from Australia via 4,300km of subsea cables, an ambitious undertaking.
Depending on the route eventually chosen, the cables could pass through Australia, Indonesia and Singapore, The Straits Times reported previously.
Dr Ahsan said: “We can test the Singapore-Australia partnership in an independent analysis, to see if it could fit into a larger regional project.” - The Straits Times/ANN
