Decarbonisation Technology August 2026 Issue

short-pipeline CO₂ transport feasible once shared systems are in place. Japan offers the clearest operational precedent: its CCS approach has focused on building a common backbone, shared transport, early subsurface screening, and standardised appraisal, before committing capital. Applied across Southeast Asia, data-driven platforms such as bMark CCS help identify which industrial belts can advance now and which should follow later by aligning emitters with the nearest viable storage and concentrating investment where injectivity, containment, and scale are already defensible (see Figure 2 ). Execution risks and how corridors address them Scale at this pace does not come without execution risk, and credible project development demands that those risks be named. Three stand out. First, reservoir underperformance: injectivity in saline aquifers can decline faster than initial modelling suggests, particularly where pressure management and baseline characterisation have been limited, a known challenge in early- stage storage development globally ( Sokama- Neuyam , 2022) . Second, demand aggregation risk: shared infrastructure economics depend on anchor emitters committing early and holding firm. If one or two large contributors delay or withdraw, the business case for shared pipelines and storage appraisal can unravel before FID. Third, regulatory continuity risk: bilateral frameworks, however well-structured, remain exposed to policy shifts that can alter the legal basis for cross-border CO₂ movement between election cycles. The corridor model directly addresses all three. Shared appraisal programmes distribute subsurface risk across multiple emitters rather than concentrating it on a single developer. Aggregated demand pools commitments, reducing reliance on any single anchor. Corridor-level governance frameworks, once embedded in national legislation rather than ministerial agreement alone, create the institutional durability that lenders require. None

of these risks should be seen as disqualifying; they are the normal conditions of large-scale infrastructure development, In fact, they are precisely the conditions that coordinated, multi- sector corridor development is designed to navigate. ASEAN’s emerging carbon corridors ASEAN’s next phase of CCS development will likely be defined less by standalone projects and more by interconnected industrial corridors. Indonesia and Vietnam are central to this shift, combining large industrial emissions with proximity to offshore storage basins capable of supporting long-duration CO₂ storage. The opportunity is therefore not simply carbon capture, but the creation of integrated source- to-sink systems linking emitters, transport infrastructure, and offshore storage at a regional scale. “ The opportunity is not simply carbon capture, but the creation of integrated source-to-sink systems linking emitters, transport infrastructure, and offshore storage at a regional scale ” Much of Southeast Asia’s industrial capacity already sits close to storage-ready geology and existing energy infrastructure. Decades of offshore oil and gas development have left behind pipelines, ports, subsurface data, and marine logistics networks that can be partially repurposed for CCS. As a result, the commercial challenge increasingly shifts from proving theoretical storage capacity to coordinating, appraising, and financing corridor-level transport and storage systems. What is emerging is effectively a regional market for CO₂ movement and storage. Singapore’s industrial base positions it naturally as a capture and aggregation hub, while Indonesia and Malaysia are increasingly positioning themselves as long-term offshore storage providers. Over time, this model could extend further across Asia-Pacific, linking regional emitters with Southeast Asian storage resources through cross-border transport corridors.