59-05-032 Proceeding

29 Proceedings of the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Congress TWO PILLARS FOR CARBON MITIGATION IN DEVELOPING ASIA: ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND RENEWABLE ENERGY Wen ZHANG 1 and Cheng-Guan Michael QUAH 2 Introduction Climate change is one of the key challenges that humanity has to face in this century. Because of varying domestic conditions, countries have to devise practical, locally-specific solutions and take appropriate collective action with some urgency. Likewise, developing Asia, where severe impacts of climate change along the long coastlines of ASEAN and the more rural interiors are anticipated, must learn from the larger global (and perhaps more Western) experience in carbon mitigation technologies and policies.With ourmuchmore rapid economic growth and industrialization, Asian nations must integrate, and adapt, these global programs and projects into our strategic national development planning, and act urgently. Based on current scientific assessments of the global carbon budget and the current rate of carbon emissions worldwide, the next 30-year period may be the ‘last’ window of opportunity for the world to act before climate change causes catastrophic environmental damages (Levin & Tompkins, 2014). As we survey the literature on themultitude of responses that many countries embark on to mitigate climate change (Appendix I), we note that overwhelmingly, these references immediately point to new sources of energy, specifically electricity generation by renewable resources.We agree that new, low carbon, sources are necessary and vital, given the rapid economic growth in Asia, including the ASEAN region; but we contend that focusing primarily on the development of new sources misses the broader picture for climate change mitigation. We assert that the energy challenges the world faces today must take into account the balancing act of NEW, additional, sources, versus the reduction of consumption via NEWcontrol algorithms for greater energy efficiency and/or conservation. Figure 1 is a graphic that illustrates our point, given the theme of this conference: interdisciplinary approaches towards sustainability through what may be termed a “system of systems” integration. From this systems perspective, reducing carbon emission requires efforts on addressing both the supply and demand sides. Carbon supply refers to energy sources that are carbon intensive, i.e. coal, oil, gas, etc., or the loss of carbon sinks through deforestation, whereas demand refers to energy end-use in industry, commercial/residential applications, transport, etc. The solution lies in reducing carbon emissions from both sides (from the demand-side through conservation 1 Student, MSc Environmental Management Program, National University of Singapore 2 Energy Office, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore