The US Agency for International Development recently put out a report on ‘Energy Trends in Developing Asia: Priorities for a Low-Carbon Future’ which tries to draw some conclusions around where efforts should be focused to reduce energy-related emissions in Asia.

The report focuses on Asia’s six largest countries in terms of energy consumption: China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. These countries pricked my interest as being the key countries in developing Asia that should be – and are – at least considering CCS as part of their greenhouse gas mitigation strategies, because of their large energy consumption (most of it fossil fuel based).

The report's key conclusions include that:

• In 2010, for the first time, the total primary energy demand in developing countries equalled demand in developed countries.
• The next two decades will see a 93 per cent growth in global energy demand, mainly from developing countries.
• In 2008, developing Asian economies accounted for 33 per cent of global energy-related CO₂ emissions. By 2030 that is expected to rise to 45 per cent (and of that, more than 90 per cent is from China and India alone).

One of the major drivers of energy use in Asia is urbanisation. By 2030, more than half of the world’s urban populations will live in Asian cities.

• Coal-fired electricity production will increase by 77 per cent from 2008 to 2030. While coal will continue to be the dominant fuel, its share will decrease slightly, from 69 to 59 per cent of electricity generation.

The report ranks clean energy measures, which are prioritized by cost-effectiveness in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions enough to achieve the '450 Scenario' of stabilising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at 450ppm CO₂-e.

Energy-efficient measures rank highest. CCS ranks 33^rd out of 48 greenhouse gas abatement options in this report. It is ranked relatively low due mainly to high costs.

Arguably, 23 of the options in the list rated ‘above’ CCS are essentially energy efficiency options, supporting the report’s conclusion that energy efficiency needs more investment.

I don’t think anyone would dispute that energy efficiency measures are the ‘low-hanging fruit’ for emissions reductions. As far as I can tell, the option in the list is CCS linked to coal, not CCS linked to industrial plants, where the costs are not as high.

It would therefore have been interesting to see where CCS-industry plants would have ended up on the list. The report acknowledges that its prioritised ranking or abatement options has limitations; nevertheless the report is a good resource and quite an easy read.