After decades of producing planet-heating fuels, depleted oil and gas fields in Malaysia and Indonesia may have a new purpose: putting carbon dioxide from some of Asia’s top emitters back underground, in a big but risky bet by state oil giants and governments.
Malaysia’s oil company Petronas has signed at least 24 memoranda of understanding with nine countries – among them Japan and South Korea – to store their excess CO2 emissions in exploited fossil fuel sites off the coast of peninsular Malaysia and Borneo island, in the gas-producing region of Sarawak.
These plans have sparked accusations of “carbon colonialism” from climate activists, who see exporting emissions for storage in another country as a “get out of jail free” card for continued fossil fuel use.
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While large carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities exist all over the globe, with many new ones under development, the scale of Petronas’ ambition is untested in the region.
The state-run company is looking to develop three CCS hubs and two flagship projects across Malaysia, for a total storage capacity of 15 million tonnes of CO2 per annum (mtpa) by 2030 – equivalent to Senegal’s emissions in a year. All the world’s CCS plants combined can currently hold about 51 mtpa.
Petronas plans to put 20% of its capital expenditure into decarbonisation projects between 2023 and 2026, with CCS making up a significant portion of the billions of dollars it wants to invest.
These projects are part of Malaysia’s broader energy transition strategy and its bid to become a carbon capture and storage (CCS) hub for Asia, a goal shared by neighbouring Indonesia.
Some of Asia’s top emitters are set to become key clients, with the Japanese government deeming CCS as “indispensable” for reducing power-sector emissions. Out of nine projects Japan has selected to test the viability of CCS, four aim to export carbon overseas, including to Malaysia and Indonesia.
While the International Energy Agency says a small amount of carbon capture will be needed in sectors where emissions are hard to reduce, like cement production, campaigners criticised Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan’s bet on carbon capture as a bid to prolong the lifespan of fossil fuel infrastructure.
Exporting emissions
Some experts consider both Indonesia and Malaysia as favourable locations to store captured CO2 because of their abundance of depleted oil reservoirs and saline aquifers, which could in principle hold the gas below ground.
Under the proposed deals, big industrial emitters in Asia would capture CO2 released when burning fossil fuels in their plants and factories, turn it into a liquid form, and ship it to Southeast Asia for storage.
Last September, Petronas agreed with eight Japanese companies and the Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security, a government body, to design a project to capture and ship CO2 from Japan, then store it in a compressed “supercritical state” in a depleted gas field off the Sarawak coast.
The Japanese entities will be responsible for capturing and liquefying the carbon emitted from power plants and industrial facilities, including steelworks and chemical plants, in Japan’s Setouchi region. Together with Petronas, they will also design the transport, injection and storage stages.
Meanwhile in Indonesia, Japanese utility Chubu Electric Power has expanded its CCS collaboration with energy giant BP to connect Japan’s Nagoya port with the BP-owned Tangguh gas field in West Papua.
Through initiatives like the Asia Zero Emission Community, Japan has pushed fossil fuel developments in Southeast Asia, including exporting and storing overseas the equivalent of around one-tenth of its current emissions by 2050, according to a report by Japan’s Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth.
In shifting their climate burden and responsibilities to tackle it onto lower-income nations, Japan and other developed countries are engaging in “carbon colonialism”, campaigners say – mimicking a pattern seen in the export of plastic waste from the Global North to the Global South.
“Wealthy, high-emitting countries get to keep burning fossil fuels while offloading their carbon onto nations that have done far less to cause the crisis,” said Sisilia Nurmala Dewi, 350.org Indonesia team lead.
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Risky business
Oil and gas giants like Petronas, BP and Indonesian state oil firm Pertamina, as well as the Malaysian and Indonesian governments, have proposed projects worth billions of dollars, anticipating growing demand for CO2 storage. But analysts are more cautious, citing high uncertainties in the CCS market and technical difficulties in keeping the carbon below ground.
Given its high cost, CCS is largely unfeasible in Malaysia and Indonesia without the existence of cross-border projects, said I Gusti Suarnaya Sidemen, CCUS research fellow at the Jakarta-based Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), which founded the Asia CCUS Network together with the Japanese government. These are the kind of projects Japan and South Korea are keen to develop.
By financing projects in Indonesia, Japan is creating a strong incentive for Jakarta to pursue these ventures, said Dwi Sawung of WALHI Indonesia, an environmental NGO. “It’s really Japan who will pay.”
On the back of that, both Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta are providing incentives for developers – with the Indonesian government even bearing some of the expense of enhanced gas recovery, a method that uses the captured CO2 to extract more fossil fuels, said ERIA research associate Ryan Wiratama Bhaskara, adding that these investments are potentially risky for both countries.
Grant Hauber, strategic energy finance advisor for Asia at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), a US-based think tank, said there is a “dangerous lack of knowledge in decision-makers worldwide” about the capabilities, risks and costs of CCS.
Hauber said even widely cited success stories, such as the Sleipner and Snøhvit projects in Norway, have struggled with the unpredictable nature of CO2 storage, as the captured carbon has been found to leak and is difficult to measure. Gas giant Equinor’s Sleipner project, for example, overreported its carbon savings by 28% from 2017 to 2021, due to defective monitoring equipment, according to DeSmog.
Injecting carbon into depleted oil and gas fields, where there are many potential paths for leakage or failures, is particularly tricky, Hauber noted, adding that geologies change across regions, making it more complex. “The chemistry is different. The conditions are different. Storage sites will perform differently. It’s what makes it so expensive,” he said.
To date, the vast majority of captured carbon has been used for a process known as enhanced oil recovery, which uses the CO2 to squeeze out hard-to-get oil in depleted fields. But 78% of new projects planned globally are destined for CO2 storage, according to the Global CCS Institute.
The risk of these high-cost abatement schemes, experts say, is that they divert funds away from proven climate solutions, prolong the burning of fossil fuels and, ultimately, cause more emissions. “The real solution isn’t to bury carbon; it’s to stop digging up more,” said 350.org’s Dewi.
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Tool for meeting climate goals?
Malaysia and Indonesia, however, view CCS as essential to meeting their net zero goals while they remain dependent on fossil fuels. For example, by mid-century, Indonesia plans to fit 76% of its coal-fired power plants with CCS technology.
According to ERIA’s estimates, Malaysia has the highest storage potential – around 130 billion tonnes of CO2 – out of all assessed Southeast Asian countries, followed by Indonesia with 49 billion tonnes of CO2.
Both countries are building up their legal frameworks in preparation. Last year, Indonesia adopted regulation that allocates 30% of storage capacity for imported CO2. Malaysia’s parliament approved its first CCS bill this month. In both cases, critics point to a lack of clarity around who is responsible for ensuring CO2 storage in the long run, and whether companies would be liable for damages.
Some projects have already moved forward. The Kasawari gas field off the Sarawak coast is set to become the world’s biggest offshore CCS facility as early as this year and Malaysia’s first large-scale project of its kind.
Kasawari’s gas reserves contain high levels of CO2 and Petronas, the plant’s owner, aims to remove the carbon and inject it under the sea in a depleted gas field to cut the emissions of its extractive activities.
Yet, even if the facility meets its target of storing 3.3 mtpa of CO2, this would amount to only a 1% reduction in Petronas’ current emissions, says a group of Malaysia-based NGOs.
The projects have also received criticism for their lack of transparency. “The environmental impact assessment for Kasawari was approved with absolutely no consultation,” said Meenakshi Raman, president of environmental justice non-profit Sahabat Alam Malaysia. Pollution threats to fishing communities are among the concerns.
Raman also cited a 2023 report pointing to a “huge gap” between the optimistic goal of CCS plants capturing 90% of emissions and real-world results, which show capture rates of around 50%.
The report by policy institute Climate Analytics warned that under-performing plants could become a source of increased emissions for many countries, Raman said, making CCS a “false solution” to the climate crisis.
The post Carbon colonialism? Malaysia and Indonesia plan storage hubs for Asian emissions appeared first on Climate Home News.
Carbon colonialism? Malaysia and Indonesia plan storage hubs for Asian emissions
For the past two decades, low-level cloud cover has been declining, increasing the amount of sunlight absorbed by Earth and amplifying global warming.
As global temperatures have reached record highs in recent years, there has been concern that the decline in cloudiness may be enhancing warming more than previously expected.
In a new study, published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Letters, we investigate how the decline in global cloudiness affects the Earth’s “energy imbalance” – the difference between absorbed solar energy and heat radiated into space that results in global warming.
This imbalance has more than doubled over the past 20 years, as greenhouse gases have trapped more heat in the atmosphere.
We find that, since 2003, the decrease of cloudiness has been responsible for half of the increase of Earth’s energy imbalance.
Analysing the drivers of global changes to cloud cover, we find that the decrease in cloudiness over the past two decades has been primarily driven by humans, rather than being caused by natural variations in Earth’s climate.
Taken together, our findings mean that scientists can even more confidently attribute recent warming to human activities.
Low-level clouds and warming
Low-level clouds are those that have a base below 6,500 feet (2,000 metres) above Earth and include stratus, stratocumulus and cumulus. They are typically found over large areas of the global ocean, where there is a large moisture supply from evaporation.
These clouds have a powerful impact on the Earth’s climate because they reflect a substantial fraction of incoming sunlight back into space.
By acting as the Earth’s “sunscreen”, they keep the climate cooler than it would otherwise be.
Satellite observations reveal a global decline in these low-level clouds since the turn of the millennium. This is shown in the chart below, where the black line represents the average percentage of the Earth covered by low-level clouds and the dashed line the downward trend.
Our research shows that the decline in cloudiness over the past 20 years has played a major role in increasing the Earth’s energy imbalance and, therefore, warming.
The Earth’s energy imbalance is the difference between the amount of energy arriving at the Earth from the sun and what is reflected and radiated back to space.
Rising greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are upsetting this balance by trapping more energy in the atmosphere, leading to warming.
A less cloudy atmosphere also helps supercharge the energy imbalance, because it means more sunlight reaches the Earth.
In our research, we use a simple model to assess how changes in low-level clouds between July 2003 and June 2024 contributed to the Earth’s energy imbalance.
We find that, averaged globally, changes in low-level cloudiness caused an extra 0.22 watts per metre squared (W/m2) per decade of absorbed sunlight. This amounts to exactly half of the concurrent increase in Earth’s energy imbalance over the same time period.
This is shown in the chart below, where the green line represents the increase in the Earth’s energy imbalance over 2003-24 and the black line shows the contribution of low-level clouds to that trend.
Why is cloudiness changing?
Scientists have attributed declining cloud cover in the 21st century to three main causes.
The first is a decrease in human-caused aerosol emissions over recent decades. Aerosols – tiny, light‑scattering particles produced mainly by burning fossil fuels – influence the formation of clouds, by acting as “seeds” for cloud droplets to form.
In recent years, aerosol emissions have been reduced due to efforts to clean up air pollution, such as cleaner shipping fuel regulations. Cleaner air has resulted in a decline in cloudiness.
Second, increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has led to a warmer and drier atmosphere, which also helps to dissipate clouds.
Although a warmer atmosphere generally holds more water vapour in absolute terms, what matters for clouds is the “relative humidity” of the air, which has been declining in many places. This is a measure of how “saturated” the air is, or how much water vapour the air contains compared to the maximum it could hold.
Finally, cloud cover decreases have also been linked to ocean surface warming, which affects atmospheric humidity and, thus, cloudiness. Reduced cloudiness leads to more sunlight being absorbed at the ocean surface – and more warming. This amplifying loop is known as a “cloud feedback”.
However, the exact strength of these three effects on cloud cover is still unclear.
In fact, cloud feedbacks are among the main uncertainties in climate model projections of global warming.
Attributing low-cloud cover changes
In the next step of our study, we explore how the three human-caused factors mentioned above – aerosols, greenhouse gases and cloud feedback – contributed to recent low-level cloud changes.
We also look at the extent to which cloud changes could be explained by natural climate variability, which causes substantial year-to-year fluctuations in cloudiness and energy imbalance.
To do this, we use a statistical technique known as “cloud-controlling factor analysis”.
This analysis involves calculating the sensitivity of clouds to their “controlling factors”, including meteorological variables, such as temperature, humidity and winds, as well as aerosol concentrations.
To calculate how each factor contributed to the bigger picture of declining cloud cover, we combine sensitivity calculations with observed trends in meteorology and aerosol emissions.
This analysis allows us to attribute trends in cloud cover to known physical drivers: either natural climate variability, or human activities linked to aerosols, greenhouse gases and cloud feedback.
Our research finds that about 40% of the low-level cloud decrease since 2003 was driven by warming of the ocean surface – in other words, the cloud feedback process. This is followed by the effects of greenhouse gases (21%) and aerosols (14%).
Natural climate variability accounts for just 3% of the low-level cloud trend.
(The remaining 23% of the trend cannot be explained by our statistical method. This could be due to the limitations of cloud, temperature, humidity and aerosol concentration observations.)
The chart below shows how human-driven factors – the sum of aerosol effects (red), greenhouse gas emissions (pink) and cloud feedback (burgundy) – were responsible for almost three quarters of the decrease in low-level cloudiness over 2003-24. Natural climate variability (blue), on the other hand, played a minor role.
Thus, our analysis indicates that, at global scales, the observed cloud decrease is primarily driven by humans, rather than being caused by natural variations in Earth’s climate.
And, since low-level clouds contribute to half of the energy imbalance increase over the same period, it follows that a significant part of recent rises in energy imbalance can also be attributed to humans.
Clouds in climate models
So, should we be concerned that this cloudiness decrease means the Earth could see more warming than already anticipated?
To answer this, we looked at whether the climate models used by scientists to project future global warming accurately simulate recent declines in low-cloud cover.
While the models produce a wide range of outcomes, we found that, on average, the simulated changes in low-level cloudiness changes are in close agreement with real-world trends.
This is reassuring, as it means the effects of low-cloud cover are already accounted for in existing warming projections.
However, questions still remain around what is driving recent increases to the Earth’s energy imbalance, which have outpaced projections made by climate models.
Our findings rule out declines in low-level clouds as the reason that climate models have been underestimating the Earth’s energy imbalance, and, as a result, warming. But it is still possible that models are underrepresenting future global warming to some extent.
Low-level clouds are just one of several drivers of changes in energy imbalance. Future work will therefore need to assess other observed and simulated drivers of energy imbalance changes: for example, the impact of upper-level clouds, or changes in water vapour or sea ice.
Finally, it is important to stress that, while our findings are reassuring, they should certainly not make us complacent about the current global warming trend. The impacts of climate change are serious enough as they are – even if there is no evidence of a missing amplifying feedback in our projections.
The post Guest post: How declining cloudiness is accelerating global warming appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: How declining cloudiness is accelerating global warming
A Dutch startup thinks it has the answer to two of Europe’s biggest energy transition conundrums – long-duration storage batteries that are free from critical minerals and powered by rust.
In a pilot project in February, Amsterdam-based Ore Energy supplied four days of uninterrupted power to a research facility operated by France’s EDF electricity utility using a battery made of little more than iron pellets, water and air. That followed a grid installation in the Netherlands last year.
“These are the first instances of grid-connected iron-air batteries in Europe,” Yakup Koç, Ore Energy’s chief operating officer, told Climate Home News. “With these deployments, we’ve proven that the technology really works.”
Using abundant, cheap materials that can be sourced locally across Europe, iron-air batteries store and release electricity through a simple, chemical process: rusting and de-rusting.
“Rusting refers to discharging, and de-rusting refers to charging,” Koç said. “When discharging, air is drawn in and reacts with the iron, forming rust and releasing electricity in the process. To recharge, the oxygen is removed, and the rust reverts to iron, ready to go again.”
Energy transition’s “missing link”
Batteries able to store solar and wind power over longer periods of time than conventional lithium-ion batteries are often described as the “missing link” in the energy transition.
Technology such as Ore Energy’s could hold particular appeal for Europe as it strives to reduce its exposure to volatile critical mineral supply chains and boost its production of batteries for power storage and electric vehicles (EVs) instead of relying so heavily on imports from China.
“There are no critical raw materials in our batteries … which means we are truly independent of supply chain issues in that sense,” Koç said.
It also makes them cheaper than established batteries, which mostly use either lithium iron phosphate (LFP) or lithium nickel cobalt manganese oxide (NMC) chemistries.
“Critical raw materials are expensive,” Koç adds. “Because we’re using abundant resources, our cost price can be as much as 10 times lower than lithium.”
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Europe sprints for storage capacity
Wind and solar make up the fastest-growing energy sources globally, but bridging inherent supply fluctuations requires batteries capable of storing energy for far longer than currently possible with a typical lithium-ion battery.
Demand for battery energy storage systems has surged and it currently accounts for 15% of global battery demand, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Multi-day storage capabilities will become increasingly important as renewable integration booms, said Zeenat Hameed, principal analyst for energy storage at Wood Mackenzie.
“Under net-zero scenarios, the average duration of newly installed storage assets may need to increase from around 2.5 hours today to roughly 20 hours to manage multi-day variability in wind and solar generation,” she told Climate Home News.
Europe added a record 27.1 GWh of new batteries in 2025, bringing total capacity to 77.3 GWh, according to a recent report by industry group SolarPower Europe, adding that capacity must increase 10-fold by 2030 to meet its needs.
With about 90% of battery-storage applications relying on Chinese lithium batteries, steps to diversify suppliers are also seen as vital to shore up energy security.
Innovation that can help reduce or diversify battery mineral supplies and demand – for example, technologies that do not require critical minerals – could play a key role in shoring up energy security, the IEA says.
Uncomplicated alternative?
This is where iron-air comes in.
Koç said Ore’s system can be configured to store energy anywhere between 24 and 100 hours, and is capable of being reused over a lifespan of as much as 20 years.
Each battery storage unit ships in standard 40-foot containers, a similar size as lithium-ion systems, and can be connected and operational within days of arriving on site.
Ore Energy is not the only company in the race to bring iron-air to the market.
US-based Form Energy, which has also developed an iron-air battery system, has partnered with Xcel Energy on a 10-megawatt (MW) iron-air system in Minnesota at a retiring coal plant. They have also announced plans to provide a 300-MW iron-air system to power a new Google data centre.
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Beyond iron-air, a broader range of long-duration energy storage (LDES) technologies is taking shape. US-based Noon Energy is developing a carbon-oxygen battery based on solid-oxide fuel cell technology which it says avoids “scarce metals and minerals” and targets storage durations of 100 hours and above, while E-Zinc’s zinc-air systems are another player in the ultra-long-duration bracket.
Mahika Sri Krishna from the LDES Council, a global organisation focused on accelerating long duration energy storage solutions, told Climate Home News a mix of different technologies would be necessary to support grid reliability as renewables gain ground.
“Medium-duration storage solutions can help manage daily variability in renewable generation, while very long-duration systems may help address less frequent but more challenging reliability events,” said Sri Krishna, a senior manager for research and analysis at the group.
Last longer, scale up faster
Iron-air faces numerous challenges to scale-up and challenge established battery technologies, however, energy experts say.
Demand for multi-day storage is not yet high enough to drive commercialisation, Hameed said, estimating that lithium-ion is expected to retain about 85% of the global storage market through 2034 as economies of scale and manufacturing innovations reduce its costs.
While iron-air’s raw materials are cheap, the overall system cost still needs to prove itself at scale, Hameed added.
At Ore Energy, the next step is moving from single- to multi-container configurations, building what Koç describes as an “energy reservoir” that can be deployed across different use cases.
The scale-up itself, he said, is less the challenge than gaining industry acceptance by building a commercial track record.
“It’s not only about customers seeing the data and knowing it works,” he said. “The whole ecosystem around a new technology has to be brought along.”
When that happens, the technology could have transformative effects on Europe’s energy transition, he said.
“Europe will not decarbonise its power system on renewables alone,” Koç said. “Without long-duration storage, Europe risks replacing dependence on fossil fuels with dependence on overbuilding, curtailment and backup generation.”
The post Dutch startup’s rust-powered batteries could help crack Europe’s energy storage gap appeared first on Climate Home News.
Dutch startup’s rust-powered batteries could help crack Europe’s energy storage gap
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Guest post: How declining cloudiness is accelerating global warming
Dutch startup’s rust-powered batteries could help crack Europe’s energy storage gap
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