In villages across the Philippines and Vietnam, families who once choked on coal smoke are now turning on gas stoves for the first time. Children breathe cleaner air in cities where smog is beginning to lift. These are the human faces of Asia’s massive push into liquefied natural gas—a US$350 billion bet that is reshaping lives and communities from rural kitchens to urban factories.
The region has more than US$350bil (RM1.47 trillion) of projects underway to expand LNG terminals, gas-burning power plants, and pipelines—triple the estimated investment for Europe, according to data from Global Energy Monitor. This boom is aimed at allowing economies including China, the Philippines, and Vietnam to avoid burning more coal.
For ordinary people, the switch means reliable electricity that keeps lights on through the night, and factories that operate without the choking haze that once settled over neighborhoods. Asian governments are seeking the same benefits the United States and Europe have enjoyed from gas for decades: the fuel can heat homes, cook food, and power factories at all hours of the day, while also cleaning up urban smog.
But this rapid expansion also risks locking in the use of fossil fuels for decades and could slow some deployments of renewable energy, according to analysts tracking the projects.
The Science Debate and the Human Stakes
While gas produces half the carbon emissions of coal, some scientists argue that gas use must shrink for the world to stave off the worst effects of climate change. The causation debate remains open, but the numbers are concrete: Asia’s gas market accounted for about the same amount of consumption as the United States, according to BP Plc data. The potential for massive further growth is why the expansion of gas infrastructure in Asia is concerning, said Robert Rozansky, a researcher cited in the data.
Mark Carney, the former Canadian and UK central bank governor who is now a special envoy on climate action for the United Nations, addressed the issue at the Asia Sustainable Finance Forum in Seoul last month. “There definitely is a role for gas,” Carney said, particularly in displacing coal.
“But we always need to keep in mind the ultimate horizon for any source of energy given its carbon footprint.” The UN has warned that the world may be on track to warm by more than three degrees Celsius, twice the Paris Agreement target—a scenario that would profoundly affect the millions of people living in Asia’s coastal communities and farming regions.
