Scaling for resilience: What Asia Pacific’s bioenergy markets can learn from each other

Bioenergy scale requires credible, long-term demand signals.

Energy security has returned to the centre of energy policy across Asia Pacific. Recent geopolitical tensions, including disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz, have reinforced a critical lesson for energy-importing economies: Resilience cannot rely solely on global fuel markets, shipping flexibility, or strategic reserves.

Countries are looking for ways to anchor parts of their energy systems closer to home.

This is where bioenergy is gaining renewed strategic relevance. It offers something that solar and wind cannot easily provide: Dispatchable, storable fuels derived from domestic or regional resources. Biodiesel, ethanol, biogas and biomethane can reduce exposure to imported fuels whilst making productive use of agricultural and waste streams already present within economies.

However, progress across Asia Pacific is not uniform. It is a patchwork of national approaches, shaped by local resources, policy choices, and infrastructure constraints. Together, these experiences show that the next phase of bioenergy growth will depend on cross-country learning and scaling what already works.

Biofuels: The importance of policy discipline
Indonesia provides the clearest example of large-scale bioenergy deployment aligned with national energy security goals. Its B40 biodiesel mandate is one of the most ambitious in the world, aimed at reducing diesel imports and retaining more energy value domestically. The programme demonstrates that with strong policy support, established supply chains and a clear strategic objective, biodiesel can scale rapidly.

Indonesia also highlights the limits of this approach. Moving toward higher blends such as B50 requires sustained feedstock availability, expanded production capacity and continued fiscal support. It also raises scrutiny over land use and sustainability. The lesson is not that biodiesel cannot scale further, but that scale must be matched by careful management of feedstock, cost, and public trust.

Malaysia’s more cautious approach illustrates this point. Whilst it has significant palm oil resources, it has limited nationwide biodiesel blending to B10, with B20 deployed selectively. The constraint is not ambition, but infrastructure readiness and exposure to volatile crude palm oil prices. Malaysia shows that technical feasibility must be matched by logistics, market design, and price stability.

For the Philippines, the challenge is different again. Reliance on coconut oil for biodiesel has constrained expansion beyond B3 due to competing uses in food and export markets. This underscores a broader lesson: Feedstock diversity matters. Overreliance on a single agricultural commodity introduces structural limits to scaling.

Vietnam presents a similar opportunity. Under new regulation, nationwide E10 gasoline becomes mandatory from June 2026, with E15 to follow from 1 January 2031. The policy is underpinned by domestic cassava-based ethanol production and six fuel-ethanol plants, equivalent to roughly 40% of projected E10 demand.

Beyond biodiesel: The rise of biomethane and renewable gas
Whilst biodiesel has been the most visible part of the bioenergy story, the next phase is increasingly centred on biomethane and renewable gas.

Malaysia’s biomethane initiative offers a glimpse of this shift. A centralised injection facility in Johor, aggregating biogas from surrounding palm oil mills and feeding it into the gas grid, represents a significant step forward. It moves bioenergy beyond on-site power generation toward integration with existing infrastructure, unlocking higher-value uses in industry and gas markets.

Indonesia is also moving in this direction, faster than its biodiesel-dominated profile suggests. PGN has signed an agreement to supply POME-derived biomethane to NeutraDC's data centre projects in Singapore from 2027, drawing on infrastructure in West Java. In parallel, Pertamina and Singapore LNG Corporation are developing a Bio-LNG value chain that converts POME into Bio-LNG for Singapore. Both projects show Indonesia's POME resource being upgraded into renewable gas and Bio-LNG, with cross-border offtake into a premium market acting as the catalyst.

Thailand is already further along this pathway. With a mature base of biogas projects from cassava, livestock, and food-processing waste, the challenge is no longer proving the technology. It is about upgrading and redirecting these flows into higher-value applications, such as transport fuels, industrial gas, or grid injection. This requires standards, incentives, and clear offtake markets.

Market creators: The role of demand centres
Not all countries contribute to bioenergy supply. Some will shape the market through demand.

Singapore is a case in point. With limited domestic feedstock, its role is to test market frameworks, such as its biomethane sandbox, where renewable gas can be imported, certified, and used within existing infrastructure. A credible demand signal from Singapore could support project development across feedstock-rich regional markets.

Japan plays a similar, but larger, role. Its interest in biomethane, Bio-LNG and e-methane reflects a strategy built around existing LNG infrastructure whilst diversifying supply sources. For regional producers, Japan represents a potential premium market, but one that requires high standards of certification, traceability and sustainability.

Together, these markets highlight a key dynamic: Bioenergy scale will not be achieved by supply alone. It requires credible, long-term demand signals.

Scaling what works: A regional learning agenda
Taken together, these country experiences suggest that the challenge is not a lack of technology, but a lack of scale and integration.

Several priorities stand out: Diversifying feedstocks, building aggregation models, creating stable policy frameworks, developing offtake markets, and strengthening certification and traceability.

Most importantly, there is a need for regional learning. Indonesia’s scale, Malaysia’s infrastructure integration, Thailand’s project maturity, and Singapore and Japan’s demand frameworks each represent pieces of a broader system. No single country has all the answers, but collectively, they offer a blueprint.

Resilience, not replacement
Bioenergy will not replace imported oil and gas in Asia Pacific. But that is not its role.

Its value lies in reducing exposure, diversifying supply, and increasing system resilience. By converting domestic and regional resources into usable fuels, bioenergy provides a hedge against global volatility whilst supporting existing infrastructure and industries.

In an increasingly uncertain energy landscape, that makes it strategically important. The question for Asia Pacific is no longer whether bioenergy has a role to play, but how quickly and effectively it can scale what already works.