Books etc

This book advances the international debate on the development of e-commerce with focus on emerging ASEAN economies. It provides readers insights on Asia's needs and efforts to improve the regional legal and economic conditions to support e-commerce. This book looks at the rules and regulations on e-commerce, and e-commerce for inclusiveness growth. It provides insights from several ASEAN member states and discovers the requirements for Asian countries to better grasp the new juncture of growth associated with economic digitalization, which also have deep implications on continuous regional integration and community-building.

This book is the first comprehensive assessment of the state of low-carbon investments in Asia, analyzing the rationales, mandates and public-private financing activities. Based on the experiences of several regional initiatives wherein public financing is catalyzing private investments in low-carbon infrastructure, this book proposes a framework that can be used as a tool to identify factors that influence private investment decisions and policy instruments that can scale up the private capital. Placing the Asian economies onto a low-carbon development pathway requires an unprecedented shift in investments. This book addresses this situation by asking questions such as: • What is the central role of private finance in achieving the Paris Agreement targets? • What key policy levers and risk mitigation can governments use in an effort to unlock the potentials of private capital? • How can regionally coordinated actions hold significant promise for scaling up private investments?

Infrastructure development is essential to economic development in less developed countries (LDCs). In particular, ASEAN Member States (AMS) and developing East Asian countries have applied development strategies that aggressively utilise global value chains (GVCs), and the logistics infrastructure and industry-supporting infrastructure services have been crucial in this endeavour. In addition to the long-lasting effort of official development assistance (ODA) and other official funds (OOF) provided by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development-Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC) countries and international organisations, the recent deeper commitments of China and other newly developed economies to infrastructure development will further stimulate infrastructure development in the region.

The power generation mix of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is dominated by fossil fuels, which accounted for almost 80% in 2017 and are expected to account for 82% in 2050 if the region does not transition to cleaner energy systems. Solar and wind power is the most abundant energy resource but contributes negligibly to the power mix. Scalable electricity production from wind and solar energy faces tremendous challenges due to system integration practices in ASEAN. Investors in solar or wind farms face high risks from electricity curtailment if surplus electricity is not used. Technologies for battery storage (lithium-ion batteries) have been developed to handle surplus electricity production from wind and solar energy but they remain costly. Hydrogen produced from electrolysis using surplus electricity, however, has numerous advantages that complement battery storage, as hydrogen can be stored as liquid gas, which is suitable for many uses and easy to transport. Employing the policy scenario analysis of the energy outlook modelling results, this paper examines the potential scalability of renewable hydrogen production from curtailed electricity in scenarios of high share of variable renewable energy in the power generation mix. The study intensively reviewed potential cost reduction of hydrogen production around the world and its implications for changing the energy landscape. The study found many social and environmental benefits as hydrogen can help increase the share of renewables in decarbonising emissions in ASEAN.

Emerging economies of Asia will need to see some US$200 billion in annual capital expenditure on low-carbon energy supply and in energy efficiency to meet the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) targets under the Paris agreement framework. The scale of this investment required to decouple carbon emissions from economic growth, will inevitably have to rely largely on mobilizing private capital. This chapter provides an overview of available channels to mobilize private investment in low-carbon transition. It argues that the private capital that can be mobilized to support low-carbon transition, is very much depend on the risk return profile of the investment and the regulatory environment in which these investors operate. If the governments wish to mobilize capital from the markets, they need to simultaneously understand not only the barriers to the investment but also effective channels through which such capital can flow. This chapter also presents an analytical framework that can characterize the risks to private investments and highlights the role of transaction enablers that governments can use to mobilize institutionally held capital in support of low-carbon energy transition.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) faces tremendous challenges regarding the future energy landscape and how the energy transition will embrace a new architecture—including sound policies and technologies to ensure energy access together with affordability, energy security, and energy sustainability. Given the high share of fossil fuels in ASEAN’s current energy mix (oil, coal, and natural gas comprise almost 80%), the clean use of fossil fuels through the deployment of clean technologies is indispensable for decarbonising ASEAN’s emissions. The future energy landscape of ASEAN will rely on today’s actions, policies, and investments to change the fossil fuel-based energy system towards a cleaner energy system, but any decisions and energy policy measures to be rolled out during the energy transition need to be weighed against potentially higher energy costs, affordability issues, and energy security risks. This paper employs energy modelling scenarios to seek plausible policy options for ASEAN to achieve more emissions reductions as well as energy savings, and to assess the extent to which the composition of the energy mix will be changed under various energy policy scenarios. The results imply policy recommendations for accelerating the share of renewables, adopting clean technologies and the clean use of fossil fuels, and investing in climate-resilient energy quality infrastructure.