BY ANASTASIA KURNIADI, ASSOCIATE AND SARAH TAM, CLIMATE LEAD
Climate change is humanity’s biggest threat, but it is also igniting a new era of human creativity and innovation, with Asia emerging as a beacon in the global fight against climate change. (Spoiler alert: Philanthropists are part of the equation!)
Breakthrough Energy, founded by Bill Gates, focuses on five key sectors known as the Five Grand Challenges, which are the main sources of global greenhouse gases linked to the way we live, eat, work, travel, and make things. We’ll breakdown each of the five grand challenges below and point to some bright spots across the region:
1. Electricity (29% of global emissions)
In a nutshell: Wind and solar power have become more widespread and affordable, yet we still depend heavily on fossil fuels. To move forward, we need ways of generating, storing and using low-carbon electricity, while scaling up existing solutions like wind, solar, advanced nuclear, geothermal, and carbon-captured thermal generation.
Bright spots in Asia: Gree Energy provides biogas-to-energy solutions that treat industrial wastewater and capture greenhouse gases, turning these into clean energy, water, renewable heat, and organic fertilizers. In Indonesia, Gree’s Hamparan project in Lampung processes wastewater from a cassava starch factory, generating renewable energy distributed to 19 nearby villages via the national utility.
2. Manufacturing (29% of global emissions)
In a nutshell: About a third of global emissions come from manufacturing. To reach net zero, we need to use clean electricity and production methods where possible and expand carbon capture technologies to prevent emissions when clean options aren’t available.
Bright spots: Steel and cement are among the most widely produced materials on Earth, with concrete being the second-most consumed material after water. Canadian firm CarbonCure develops CO2 removal technologies for the concrete industry, allowing producers to inject captured CO2 into fresh concrete. Since 2018, this technology has been piloted in Singapore through a partnership with Pan-United.
3. Agriculture (20% of global emissions)
In a nutshell: Agricultural emissions come from livestock and soil. To meet global food demand while reducing emissions, we need to change how we farm and eat: reduce fertilizers, improve soil management, cut livestock methane, and scale up alternatives like plant-based meat and dairy to lower consumption and waste of high-carbon foods.
Bright spots: Agriculture is key to Southeast Asia’s climate solutions. Companies like Singapore-based Rize empowers farmers with technology to access critical agricultural data, boosting climate resilience, while CarbonFarm, winner of the Grow Asia Innovation Challenge 2024, uses satellites and AI to monitor and certify decarbonization projects across Asia, helping farmers increase profits by up to 20%. The Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein, launched by NUS, the Good Food Institute, and the Bezos Earth Fund, was also recently launched with the aim of advancing alternative protein research in Asia amid rising meat demand.
4. Transportation (15% of global emissions)
In a nutshell: Internal combustion engines transformed our lives but at a high cost to the environment. To eliminate transportation emissions, we need a complete shift to electric vehicles and low-carbon fuels for moving goods and people.
Bright spots: The electric vehicle market is set to soar, with demand for batteries expected to increase 30% each year until 2030. Earthshot Prize Winner, GRST (based in HK), is offering a cleaner, safer, and cheaper way to make and recycle lithium-ion batteries, which will pollute less and is more easily recyclable. GRST’s batteries last 10% longer than the average battery, while reducing 40% of emissions from production.
5. Buildings (7% of global emissions)
In a nutshell: Buildings emit carbon during construction (from materials like cement and steel) and for their operations (through heating and cooling). While we can improve energy efficiency in existing buildings, we cannot undo the emissions from their construction. As built environments are set to expand with Asia’s growing urbanization, we need greener materials and cleaner building processes.
Bright spots: In Indonesia, cooling in buildings and the cold food chain accounts for 30% of the nation’s electricity use. Without intervention, building sector electricity demand could increase by 400% by 2040. To address this, the government launched the National Cooling Action Plan (I-NCAP) in Bali, focusing on managing cooling demand, improving energy efficiency, and promoting low-global warming refrigerants.
Despite the significant challenges, Southeast Asia is emerging as a beacon in the global fight against climate change. Conversations are also growing around just energy transition, climate-resilient agriculture, and holistic strategies to implement climate technologies – all emerging from this region.
Philanthropy can act as the seed that helps ideas grow into large-scale solutions, leveraging risk-tolerant capital to drive progress in ways that traditional funding sources often cannot. For example, Temasek, Enterprise Singapore, and Breakthrough Energy have together launched the Breakthrough Energy Fellows-Southeast Asia to supercharge the development of early-stage climate-tech solutions in the region.
Indeed, there is still hope, and it will need all hands (and brains) on deck to rapidly foster innovation, forge cross-sector partnerships, and build resilience across different facets of society.
Anastasia Kurniadi and Sarah Tam,
21 October 2024