Prof Suttichai Assabumrungrat (Chulalongkorn University Thailand)
Participants:
Resilience Development Initiative (Indonesia), Curtin University Malaysia (Malaysia), Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (Malaysia), University of Technology Sarawak (Malaysia), Kumamoto University (Japan)
Location: ASEAN Countries
The extreme utilization of fossil fuels and the corresponding environmental effects inclusive of global warming and environmental-friendly pollution have become a global problem and urged people to aggressively search for cheap, environmentally friendly and renewable energy. In the ASEAN alone, the energy-related carbon emissions are predicted to rise two times in 2035. This increase is commensurate with the increase in the regional energy demand due to improved public welfare, low retail oil prices (due to subsidies), and inadequate mass transports. To improve the situation, a strategic policy can be directed to the transportation sector, which increasingly consumes a large amount of energy every year, which is dominated by fossil fuel. One of the important transport modes that have a specific challenge for decarbonization is airplane. Not only it is not applicable for electric vehicle strategy like for road transport, the aviation industry is projected to have a significantly larger market in ASEAN in a near future. Therefore, a progressive development towards a clean energy solution of biomass for the aviation industry that is later known as bio-jet fuel and is becoming more urgent to be realized.
Elisabeth Rianawati (RDI director) together with four multidisciplinary team of scientist and researchers from Malaysia and Japan were managed to secure in a grant to conduct collaborative research that focus on the usage of different biomass in specific ASEAN countries (Malaysia and Indonesia) as feedstock in the production of renewable energy in the form of high quality of bio-oil for aviation industry. The main aim of this research is to utilize the palm oil wastes in the ASEAN region as a feedstock for the upgrading of the biofuel to renewable jet fuel.
The scope of this research include current status, challenges, and future policies related to upgrading of bio-oil to jet fuel in ASEAN regions. Due to COVID-10 pandemic, the research was conducted through desk review and qualitative analysis. Furthermore, this research will look at Malaysia and Indonesia as case studies from ASEAN member states (AMS) as well as Japan to stimulate interest on the use of agricultural residue for bioenergy production and mitigate solid waste disposal problem in ASEAN countries.
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