**4. Policy Recommendations**

The development and deployment of green technologies are viable and necessary in Southeast Asia to address the critical issues of climate change and adaptation in the context of increasing energy demands. The development and deployment of green energy technologies will improve environmental quality, human welfare and overall help developing economies to achieve sustainable development goals. ASEAN as a regional multinational organization has a pivotal role to play to not only fulfill its global commitments of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) but also to facilitate cross-sectoral partnerships for sustainable economic development. This is important to achieving the ASEAN Community Vision 2025, which aims to sustain the momentum of regional integration [45].

There seems to be lack of adequate experience and expertise in some ASEAN member states such as Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia when it comes to the evaluation of risks of renewable energy investments, which has translated into lack of financial support and public capital immobility towards renewable energy investment. The cost of deploying renewable energy sector has been continuously falling, which has increased prospects for accelerated investment shifting away investor's choices from fossil fuels towards renewables. Green technologies such as hydropower, geothermal and hydrogen carbon have become substantially competitive. For instance, the costs of solar PV, concentrating solar, onshore wind and offshore wind have fallen respectively by 82%, 47%, 39% and 29% between 2010 and 2019 [46].

Around 56% of capacity additions for utility-scale renewable power achieved lower electricity costs in 2019 than the cheapest new coal plant. The annual potential savings were projected around \$23 billion if 500 GW of existing coal were to be replaced by solar wind [47]. This global trend is an indication for the policymakers in ASEAN also to emphasize alternative green energy options and exploit the huge benefits they bring. Technologies to reduce emissions from the power sector such as carbon capture, utilization and storage are essential, and efficiency must be achieved in sectors such as vast cooling and road transport. The gasification of biomass and solar–thermal technology create

alternatives in producing hydrogen from renewable energy sources. Similarly, the surplus wind electricity is also used for hydrogen production as a means for storing energy, which reduces the risk from the curtailment of solar and wind power [7].

#### *4.1. Transitioning towards Hydrogen Carbon Economy*

The ASEAN countries could emphasize on an efficient interplay between energy, environment and economy in moving towards a hydrogen carbon economy. Hydrogen has major implications in various sectors such as transport. Countries like India have welcomed foreign investment in fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen transportation infrastructure, which have already started in some pilot cities. Similarly, in Japan, the Tokyo Metropolitan government has increased the number of hydrogen buses to 100 in 2020 [48]. As for the ASEAN region, the Sarawak Local Government in Malaysia is starting to operate hydrogen buses soon. Singapore is also collaborating with companies from Japan to explore the development of hydrogen as a new clean fuel to decarbonize emissions.

Hydrogen production mostly comes from natural gas as it consists of 70 million tones, which is around three quarters of the annual global or 6% of natural gas use. Coal also contributes equally, as countries like China have a major stake while only some of thei production of hydrogen comes from oil and electricity [40]. It can be observed from Figure 4 below that the support investments for hydrogen technologies have increased recently in many countries with around 50 targets, mandates and several policy incentives especially focused on the transport sector. Hydrogen production mostly comes from natural gas, as it consists of 70 million tonnes, which is around three quarters of the annual global or 6% of natural gas use.

**Figure 4.** Support policies for hydrogen development. Source: [40].

There is not a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to hydrogen policy. The production of both "blue" and "green" hydrogen include several opportunities and risks to the countries following the respective approaches, even though there are options available to deploy hydrogen products from both fossil fuels and low-carbon sources such as renewable electricity. On one hand, hydrogen based on fossil fuels may enable rapid scale-up in short term. However, there are minimal environmental benefits, and it requires carbon capture in the long term. On the other hand, the substantial application of hydrogen in big sectors such as transport and chemicals can bring efficiency to the energy system. This could bring numerous opportunities to exploit energy resources that are currently underutilized. The ASEAN government should align their ambition and approach for the use of hydrogen by considering the international practices as well as the market scope where it can be widely applied.

There still remains a considerable gap towards realizing its potential despite the wide spectrum of opportunities entailed by hydrogen with its industry application. An actionoriented plan and vision is required both for the near future to make hydrogen feasible for that future as the support for clean energy transition is growing among policymakers in the ASEAN. An intelligible policy is essential to meet the long-term hydrogen goals as there are various risks associated in investments, which could be detrimental to many stakeholders given the complexity of hydrogen value chains. A standard regulation is required across the ASEAN countries to mitigate uncertainties and co-ordination problems. The IEA has stated four key value chains as an opportunity in the coming decade to accelerate the speed of hydrogen deployment focusing on different regions of the world. The ASEAN is focused as part of the fourth value chain as a part of Asia Pacific, along with Middle East, North Africa and Europe, which are "the first shipping routes", in order to kick-start international hydrogen trade for the ultimate global low-carbon market [49].

Hydrogen can be directly produced from increasingly demanded coal in the ASEAN with near-zero greenhouse gas emissions as carbon capture and storage technology becomes available. However, the development and deployment of certain green technologies like the carbon capture, utilization and storage requires appropriate institutional and policy set up as a prerequisite. There are raw materials widely used in infrastructure such as in construction, aerospace and automotive sectors, whereby traditional materials are replaced by carbon-based materials such as carbon composites and manufactured graphite. These materials can largely absorb the enormous amount of carbon products as countries like Canada, Japan and the US have already constructed and developed bridges with such mechanisms. One major advantage of carbon-composites in comparison to traditional materials such as steel is that it does not erode and is five times stronger than the mainstream heavy construction equipment [33]. There could be a significant decrease in CO2 emissions, which in turn would discontinue the cement-manufacturing plants by replacing concrete with carbon materials. There has been good progress made in terms of using carbon-based products as additives for substituting cements.
