Decarbonized power generation in selected GMS countries: Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Vietnam

In the last decade, the energy demand in the selected Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) countries, namely Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Vietnam, has been growing drastically in proportion to the economic development, urbanization of the countries, and modernization of people’s lifestyles. It leads to an enormous increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due to the dependency on fossil fuels as the main sources of energy supply. The consumption of total final energy (TFEC) in 2015 in the four GMS countries in the residential, commercial, industrial, and transport sectors was 138.66 Mtoe, where the percentage utilization of oil products, biomass, electricity, coal, and natural gas were 44.71%, 22.87%, 19.24%, 9.93%, and 3.25%, respectively. In the same year, the power sector of these countries generated electricity of 357.42 TWh from three dominant sources: natural gas (49.23%), coal (26.37%), and hydro (21.21%), while other renewable energy and other petroleum products accounted for only 2.88% and 0.30%, respectively. Consequently, GHG emissions in the four countries (excluding LULUCF) were about 724.86 MtCO2 equivalent. Of this amount, the energy sector alone in these countries contributed GHG emissions about 61.85% of total GHG emissions in the four GMS countries, followed by the agriculture, IPPU, and waste sectors, which accounted for 22.32%, 10.45%, and 5.37%, respectively. In terms of CO2 emissions, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Vietnam emitted around 504.54 MtCO2 in 2015, where the energy sector would be the main CO2 producer by ejecting around 423.16 MtCO2, while the non-energy sector emitted CO2 around 81.38 MtCO2. In addition, shares of CO2 in GHG emissions in the energy sector are about 91.1% for Cambodia, 91.96% for Lao PDR, 97.89% for Thailand and 88.56% for Vietnam. Therefore, CO2 emissions in the energy sector are expected to increase tremendously in the next few decades unless there are implementation of CO2 countermeasures.Human-induced climate change is the major concern, owing to the drastic growth in energy demand and the reliance on fossil fuels. To challenge this worldwide crisis, the selected GMS countries, as members of the UNFCCC, signed and ratified the Paris Agreement in 2015. Then, these countries have formulated the GHG mitigation pathways, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and Long-term Low Greenhouse Gas Emission Development Strategy (LT-LEDS), to keep the increment of global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius and pursue the restriction target of 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial levels. However, as of March 2023, only Thailand and Cambodia had officially submitted their LT-LEDS to the UNFCCC.This research analyzes the possibility of achieving net-zero CO2 emissions in the mid-century of the selected GMS countries by using the Low Emissions Analysis Platform (LEAP) as an analysis tool. The study period is from 2015 to 2050. There are two scenarios, the Business-as-Usual (BAU) scenario and the Net-Zero-Emission (NZE) scenario, which are constructed for identifying and comparing the future of CO2 emissions as well as the structure of future energy systems. The future energy demand and the dependency on fossil fuels in the BAU follow the current trend and the growth of the gross domestic product (GDP) of each country. However, the NZE scenario undertakes the utilization of renewable energy (RE), improvement of energy efficiency (EE), and other advanced low-carbon technologies such as electric vehicles and carbon capture and storage to integrate into the energy system.Results from the LEAP modeling indicate that in order to achieve the target of decarbonized energy systems in the four GMS countries, several new energy-efficient technologies have to be adopted on both the demand and supply sides to reduce around 41% of final energy consumption. The total final energy consumption would mainly come from electricity (at least 52%), while the utilization of petroleum products and natural gas would be 6 and 16%, respectively. Additionally, the consumption of coal in the final energy demand must be dropped to zero. Furthermore, in the power sector, renewable energy sources, including biomass, hydro, solar, and wind must be intensively integrated into the power generation process to generate at least 81% of total generation. Advanced low-carbon technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) would be integrated into fossil fuel-based and bioenergy-based industries and power plants. In addition, the use of modal shifting from private to public transport and the application of battery electric vehicles (BEV) in the transport sector are key policy measures in the selected GMS countries for the achievement of net zero CO2 emissions by 2050.The key findings of CO2 mitigation in the NZE scenario show that the carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector in the four selected GMS countries have to be decreased by around 88.67% compared to the BAU scenario, from 1,796.74 MtCO2 to 203.53 MtCO2 in 2050. Shares of CO2 emissions from the four countries in 2050 under the NZE scenario for Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Vietnam are estimated to be around 11%, 7%, 44%, and 38%. In addition, CO2 emissions from the non-energy sector are found to be 49.38 MtCO2 in 2050, while the LULUCF sector of the four GMS countries must provide at least 256.80 MtCO2 of carbon sinks in order to sequester the remaining CO2 emissions from these countries.