Sustainable futures
Decarbonisation for ASEAN Countries
Climate change is the gravest threat to humanity’s long-term prosperity. To keep global warming to below 2 ⁰C, strategic planning methods for policymaking are essential.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, as developing economies, have seen dramatic rises in carbon dioxide (CO2 ) emissions over the past 20 years. For instance, the CO2 per capita of Malaysia has risen from five tonnes per year in 2000 to eight tonnes per year in 2018, and therefore it is important to develop tools that incorporate region-specific conditions.
In the past 15 years, Professor Dominic C. Y. Foo from University of Nottingham Malaysia and an international team, including Professor Raymond Tan of De La Salle University Philippines, the University of Surrey’s Dr Michael Short and the University of Tokyo’s Dr Yasunori Kikuchi, have developed energy and CO2 planning tools to identify optimal use of energy resources, subject to constraints such as budget, uncertainty and multi-period planning.
The team’s DECO2 (DECarbonisation Options Optimisation) is a software tool that uses mathematical programming models to determine optimal pathways to decarbonisation through the deployment of CO2 capture and storage technologies, negative emissions technologies, renewable energy sources and alternative energy sources for optimal energy transitions. The latest version of DECO2 also allows emissions trading and the incorporation of a carbon pricing model.
Try out an online version of out DECO2
Professor Foo’s team has hosted three industrial decarbonisation workshops in Malaysia and the Philippines, benefiting more than 70 industry professionals, who can apply this knowledge to reducing CO2 from their industrial processes.
These decarbonisation initiatives were supported by COP26 Trilateral Grant (British Council) as well as the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office’s Research and Innovation for Development in ASEAN scheme.
Dominic C. Y. Foo
Dominic C. Y. Foo is a Professor of Process Design and Integration at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus and the Founding Director of the Centre of Excellence for Green Technologies. He is a Fellow of IChemE and ASM, a Chartered Engineer (CEng), Professional Engineer (PEng), ASEAN Chartered Professional Engineer (ACPE), and a former President of the Asia Pacific Confederation of Chemical Engineering (APCChE). Recognised as a top 2% world-leading researcher (Stanford list), Professor Foo specialises in process integration for resource conservation and CO2 reduction, collaborating with researchers globally.
Email: dominic.foo@nottingham.edu.my