Leading University (from UK) : University of Surrey
Participating Universities : Tokyo University (Japan) University of Nottingham Malaysia (Malaysia)
Associate partners : De La Salle University (Philippines) Monash University (Malaysia) 

Project Summary: Climate Change is the gravest threat to humanity’s long-term prosperity and the global co-operation to mitigate this threat is unprecedented. The COP26 summit taking place in 2021 aims to accelerate the achievement of the Paris Agreement’s goals. To achieve these ambitious emissions targets and keep global warming to below 2 °C, strategic planning methods for policymaking are essential. These should span entire nations’ emissions contributions, across sectors, and should be able to plan for achievable implementation of emissions reduction technologies, negative emissions technologies, within budgetary, time, and social uptake constraints. ASEAN countries, as developing economies, have seen dramatic rises in CO2 emissions over the past 20 years (e.g. The CO2 per capita of Malaysia has risen from 5 t/y in 2000 to 8 t/y in 2018), and therefore it is important to develop tools that incorporate region-specific conditions. 

The proposed project seeks to develop a decision-making software framework, based on rigorous mathematical optimisation models, for planning the decarbonisation of ASEAN countries, in line with commitments made while signing the Paris Agreement (PA). The planning framework relies on a combination of proven, mature technologies such as the Carbon Emission Pinch Analysis (CEPA), developed by members of the project team over the past 10 years, and novel mathematical optimisation-based tools that provide rigorous guarantees on the qualities of the solution, subject to planning constraints such as budget, social resistance to uptake, efficiencies of interventions, and implementation time. 

The open-source software and planned impact activities ensure that the results and tools’ impact is maximised to help both governmental and industrial policymakers in ASEAN countries to identify achievable emissions targets and the optimal paths to achieve them through a range of technologies, interventions and budgetary and time constraints. The team will deliver significant outreach and engagement activities through multi-day workshops with project partners in emissions-intensive industries in Malaysia, as well as with government agencies to ensure that the software and solutions are data-driven, implementable and align with national strategies. 

 Objective of the Research:

  1. Develop novel strategic planning mathematical optimisation models for decarbonisation of ASEAN nations. The flexible framework will account for diverse industries, technologies, and timescales, and is designed for extension to other economies and planning under uncertainty. 
  2. Generate realistic CO2 emissions targets for Malaysian case study. Using the model and government feedback, demonstrate approach on Malaysia focusing on energy, transportation and industrial sectors, which contribute over 80% of CO2 emissions in Malaysia, to determine realisable short- and long-term targets. 
  3. Determine optimal decarbonisation strategies for ASEAN countries for each contributing industry, incorporating different technologies at varying technology-readiness levels (TRLs) and budgetary and uptake constraints. 
  4. Develop user-friendly open-source software for industry and government policymakers to plan long-term decarbonisation strategy. 
  5. Ensure tools and techniques have significant impact through a range of outreach and impact-delivery workshops and scientific publications, leaving a legacy of skills and scientific advances.