Promote Decarbonization in Industrial Parks Across ASEAN Countries

Amid the recent global trend toward decarbonization, more companies based in ASEAN countries have declared carbon neutrality as part of their business strategy and are participating in international decarbonization initiatives. Given the circumstances, addressing decarbonization specifically within industrial parks, where manufacturing companies, as energy consumers, are concentrated and energy consumption density is high, holds significant potential for contributing to decarbonization. In this context, industrial park operators are expected to play an important role as “aggregators” by undertaking bulk procurement and supply of renewable electricity within the park and by consolidating tenant companies’ issues and needs to encourage policy formulation by governments, or “platformers” by providing technologies and services to companies advancing decarbonization technology adoption.

While industrial parks and tenant companies across ASEAN have independently initiated decarbonization efforts, decarbonization approaches are diversifying due to significant differences in geographical characteristics, economic scale, population size, industrial composition, energy self-sufficiency rates, power generation mix, renewable energy potential and the status of policy or institutional frameworks across countries. Therefore, Asia Zero Emission Community (AZEC) is promoting cooperation under the concept of “one goal, various pathway.” On the other hand, as a common factor, ASEAN countries are actively developing industrial parks with the expectation of attracting investment and technology transfer from global companies and collaboration within a limited geographic area is essential, centered on industrial park operator closely working with tenant companies, infrastructure providers, technology suppliers, financial institutions, and other stakeholders to advance decarbonization. Based on these perspectives, AZEC is expected to systematize diverse carbon neutrality initiatives promoted in industrial parks, leverage them as shared knowledge, and coordinate related industrial policies in partner countries, which facilities individual projects for decarbonization at the operational level.

This project aims to systematize pathways and foster common ground to advance both project development and policy coordination for industrial park decarbonization using AZEC framework by two specific activities: 1) categorizing decarbonization approaches for industrial park through case studies in various countries, 2) examining decarbonization scenarios in model industrial parks while extracting best practices for each category, and 3) identifying country-specific and common challenges in several countries.

Please access the full report here:
(English)[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1up3RDAvW3YxUWe0MvVK5m_0U1ANHBaHh/view?usp=sharing]
(Japanese)[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ACRBU89dyJrsErzJoZ7msUGw_PwVPZVZ/view?usp=sharing]