– by Hanh Le
Over the first 10 months of 2025, I’ve travelled extensively around Asia talking about carbon capture and storage (CCS) – multiple trips to Malaysia and Singapore for key industry events, conferences in Indonesia and Thailand and, mid-year, a summit in Melbourne, Australia.
It’s an exciting time to be part of the CCS industry in our region, where governments and industries are working through the early stages of developing cross-border CCS networks.
These will be necessary in Asia Pacific because, unlike North America and Europe, the largest sources of emissions are geographically distant from the largest storage sites.
Major industrial economies like Japan, South Korea and Singapore have the ability to capture industrial emissions, but not the geological capacity to store them. On the other hand, countries such as Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia possess ample storage space and have signalled interest in providing CO2 storage services.
Prospective storage and receiving nations in Asia Pacific are already progressing a range of cross-border CCS initiatives. Malaysia and Indonesia have signed MOUs and collaboration agreements with Singapore, Japan and South Korea on cross-border CCS projects, while Australia’s decarbonisation partnerships with those three countries also reference CCS.
Once established, these networks will drive decarbonisation at a highly impactful scale. It’s been estimated Asia Pacific could have the capacity to sequester up to three gigatonnes of emissions per annum by 2050.
This will generate new economic opportunities, as well as reducing emissions. Boston Consulting Group projects that CCS in Asia Pacific could support as many as 300,000 jobs and add up to $US220 billion in GDP annually as soon as 2035.
The biggest barriers to this happening – and happening on this relatively short-term timeline – will not be technical.
Hanh Le speaks at APAC Energy Capital Assembly in Singapore in June 2025.
A more proven technology than many people think
One of the biggest misconceptions I find myself addressing about CCS in Asia Pacific is that it’s a new technology that is still in some ways unproven.
While the past decade has seen the IEA and the IPCC publicly recognise CCS as essential to unlocking pathways to achieving net zero, it’s a tool that has been used effectively for much longer than that. Globally, projects currently operational can capture and store about 50 million tonnes of CO2 per annum.
The United States has been using CCS for more than 50 years, primarily as a tool for enhanced oil recovery. From a European perspective, Norway’s Sleipner facility – recognised as the world’s first commercial CCS project – will celebrate 30 years of operations next year.
Within Asia Pacific, Australia now has two well-executed projects that showcase CCS as a proven greenhouse gas emissions abatement solution.
Chevron’s Gorgon CCS, which stores CO2 from production at the Gorgon and Jansz-Io gas fields on Barrow Island off Western Australia, has been operating since 2019. Gorgon has stored 11 million tonnes of CO2e during that time and is expected to store more than 100 million tonnes over its lifetime.
More recently, Santos very successfully launched Australia’s first onshore CCS project at Moomba in the South Australian outback. Like Gorgon, Moomba CCS is remotely located – 770km north of the city of Adelaide in the Strzelecki Desert.
Built in a corner of the long-standing Moomba gas plant, the CCS facility has already stored more than 1 million tonnes of CO2 since starting operations in October 2024. With annual capacity of 1.7 million tonnes, it’s the equivalent of removing 700,000 petrol cars from the road each year.
Domestic emissions reduction like this is highly significant. A recent EY study suggested that CCS networks on the east coast of Australia could add as much as $AU66 billion to the country’s GDP in coming decades.
But it’s the pointer to a bigger picture opportunity – cross-border CCS spanning Asia Pacific – that is most exciting about the successful execution of projects like Moomba and Gorgon.
In the years to come, we can expect to see many similar facilities built in countries such as Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, underpinning transboundary CO2 trade that will be essential to regional debarbonisation.
Towards a conducive policy environment
While technical aspects should not hold cross-border CCS back in Asia Pacific, the outlook from a policy, regulatory and legal standpoint is less clear. The regional policy landscape for CCS remains quite nascent and must catch up to technology.
With countries treating aspects of CO2 transactions differently and no whole-of-region regulations or standards, how do we ensure cross-border CCS can be scaled up quickly enough to have a real impact in the next few decades?
This is a pivotal question that the Asia Natural Gas and Energy Association (ANGEA) and its member companies have been working through for several years.
This question was the driver for a groundbreaking collaboration between ANGEA and BCG to build understanding and fluency in key issues that need to be addressed in bilateral cross-border CCS agreements in Asia.
The Accelerating cross-border CCS in Asia Pacific study provides a first-of-its kind framework for governments to draw upon in bilateral discussions about cross-border CCS. This framework outlines options to ensure avoidance of double- counting of emissions reductions, accountability for liabilities of leaked emissions, and adoption of best practice in the operationalisation of CCS projects, including transport, injection and monitoring of CO2.
Importantly, our report seeks to guide, rather than prescribe, and presents flexible options that acknowledge the need for cross-border CCS agreements to fit with the individual circumstances and needs of the countries involved.
ANGEA has been very encouraged by how receptive governments and industries around Asia Pacific have been to our study and framework since they were launched in late 2024. Seeing elements of the study referenced in government discussion papers suggests that the issues we identified are central to the advancement of cross-border CCS and that they are being taken seriously.
Policy, regulatory and legal clarity required to support significant investment in CCS projects in Asia Pacific will only emerge through collaboration, consultation and dialogue between governments, industries and communities.
We believe our framework can help inform these conversations. It provides a resource that governments can consider when they sit down to negotiate the bilateral agreements that will be a vital first step to turning the promise of cross-border CCS into reality.
Northern Lights guiding the way
In Europe, of course, cross-border CCS is already becoming a reality through the Northern Lights project.
Northern Lights is not only a watershed project for global cross-border CO2 transport and storage, it serves as a great example of what can be achieved when governments and industries work together with common decarbonisation objectives in mind.
Northern Lights was certainly a project the ANGEA and BCG team looked towards during the development of our study and framework.
Part of this related to seeing what commonalities might exist that could be applied to the Asia Pacific context; but there was also a need to identify differences, where our region would need to find other ways to address and solve key challenges.
One similarity between Northern Lights and ambitions for cross-border CCS in Asia Pacific is that international investment will help deliver scale and reduce the cost of storage for domestic emitters over time.
Access to green finance mechanisms and carbon credits can also help improve bankability and accelerate development of cross-border CCS projects in Asia Pacific, just as they did for Northern Lights.
Northern Pioneer offloading. Photo by Ruben Soltvedt.
A solution for heavy, essential industry in Asia Pacific
The development of cross-border CCS value chains will have a wide range of benefits for Asia Pacific.
The job-creation and economic activity projections referenced previously from BCG are highly compelling.
CCS can also help drive emissions reduction through LNG supply chains.
With LNG an increasingly important part of Asia’s energy future – Wood Mackenzie projects regional demand to nearly double by 2050 – it’s important that the global gas industry continues to tap into available decarbonisation levers.
Gorgon, a major source of LNG for Asia, is already using CCS and others will follow. BP’s Tangguh CCUS, Indonesia’s first at-scale CCUS project, is currently being developed to help unlock about 3 trillion cubic feet of additional gas resources.
One of the most important beneficiaries of cross-border CCS in Asia Pacific is one that is sometimes overlooked. Clusters of essential but notably hard-to-abate industries are located around the region, including in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.
Such industries include steelmaking, cement making, chemical manufacturing and fertiliser production, all of which are vital to everyday life but extremely challenging to decarbonise unless the chemical processes involved are fundamentally changed.
CCS offers a pathway to significantly reduce emissions without needing to do this.
It’s very clear from my travels around Asia Pacific over the past two years that momentum for CCS is building. While tangible progress on projects and agreements has been slower than we might have liked, establishment of cross-border CCS feels very much within grasp.
ANGEA and its members are committed to working with governments, industries and communities to ensure CCS is a reality for the region’s decarbonisation pathway.
Hanh Le is the Cross-Border CCS Advisor for the Asia Natural Gas & Energy Association, which works with governments, industries and communities in Asia, providing affordable solutions that promote energy security, economic growth and decarbonisation.
This article was originally published by the International Gas Union’s Gas In Transition magazine.
