British Chamber of Commerce Singapore: SIEW Thinktank Roundtable The Net-Zero COP: COP26 - Trade Opportunities on the Journey to Decarbonising ASEAN

With 18 panellists from the public and private sector, convened by British Chamber of Commerce Singapore’s Energy & Utilities (E&U) Business Committee, this bumper session dived into the commercial and trade opportunities on a journey to decarbonising ASEAN. BritCham is delighted to have partnered with SIEW to arrange this knowledge sharing session.

The session covered net zero policy development and innovation, technology and systems development, finance, and collaboration with the United Kingdom. The E&U committee focussed its 2021 events calendar on global insights, best practices, learnings, and outcomes from UK-based testbeds, and building business models to enable the energy transition to be financed. This SIEW ThinkTank Roundtable brought it all together.

Keynotes and panels were convened around the following:

• Policy development and diplomacy
• Asia’s role in the energy transition and scaling up of sustainable infrastructure
• Developing a hydrogen economy alongside carbon, capture, utilisation, and storage
• Finance and risk revolution
• Bringing it all together, summary and collaboration

BritCham partnered with the UK’s Catapult Network throughout the panels. The Catapults, formed under Innovate UK, bring together the public and private sector to accelerate business growth and stimulate markets. These physical centres bring together nine leading technology and innovation centres in 40 locations across the UK. The panels were joined by leaders from the Energy, Connected Places and High-Value Manufacturing Catapults.

Two keynotes set the scene on the challenges and opportunities in ASEAN from the Regional Director Southeast Asia, Climate and Energy at the British High Commission in Singapore and the lessons learnt – what might apply to the region and lessons from the UK experience, including what may or may not work in the region - from the Director, Analysis and Assurance at the UK energy regulator OFGEM.

The first panel covered Asia’s role in the Energy Transition and Scaling up investments in Southeast Asia’s Sustainable infrastructure and covered the policy development decisions needed to create efficient energy systems. Covering several energy transition focused technologies, the panel sought policy examples applicable to this region. The conversation followed both the supply driven proposition, to examining the problem from the demand side; managing demand in a disaggregated way, to reduce waste and use smart technology.

Panel two unpicked the emerging hydrogen economy in the region alongside carbon capture, utilisation, and storage. With Singapore’s hydrogen study and the UK’s hydrogen roadmap now published the panel focussed on the realities including technology integration including into the transportation sector, and the collaboration needed to establish a carbon services hub in Singapore.

Panel three focused on finance and risk and the revolution required in the investment and finance community to realign to support regional economies in the transition goals. The panel examined the vital aid, community support and development finance post-COVID and the rapid growth in green and sustainability-linked products and investment criteria amin financial institutions.

The concluding session helped bring together key insights from all the sessions together with the moderators. In this Thinktank Roundtable Session and throughout the year the BritCham E&U committee has included policy development, technology, and finance aspects of energy transition as part of its events to apply a techno-economic and commercial lens that is not often included in studies and activities. The summarising panel also looked ahead to post-COP26 and what can be done to spur energy transition development in ASEAN and in collaboration with the UK.

Access the 2021 SIEW Thinktank Roundtable sessions on-demand here for more insights. Sign up to receive alerts on future SIEW events.