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Climate Markets & Enablers
178
Companies
15.5%
OF ASEAN-6
1,148
TOTAL COMPANIES IN ASEAN-6
Top Stories in 2026
This chapter is about getting money to flow into climate solutions, and there's no shortage of money looking for a home. Large Asian institutions, pension funds, insurers, banks, collectively manage US$123 trillion, and they are putting more of it toward climate investments each year while pushing governments for clearer rules. Singapore alone has laid out a plan to help close the US$700 billion global funding gap for protecting and restoring nature.
Despite all that enthusiasm, critics note, most of these investors still don't have definitive plans for dealing with heavy emitters like fossil fuel companies, which raises doubts about how ready the region actually is to shift away from them credibly.
There are ways to move this money into climate projects, just not enough of them. The system leans on a few mechanisms with no backup if one stalls, so this is about spreading risk as much as raising money.
1
Southeast Asia's carbon credit supply does not match what buyers want.
Southeast Asia is issuing more credits from categories global buyers increasingly discount. Nature-based projects – avoided deforestation and reforestation – fell from 85% of regional issuance in 2021 to 19% in 2024, while energy-generation credits reached 34%. Yet, nature projects represented 61% of regional retirements on average between 2017 and 2025.
Indonesia illustrates the demand gap. IDXCarbon opened internationally in January 2025 with 1.78 million authorised energy sector credits, but trading remains thin and volatile. The opportunity lies in credible forest, peatland and mangrove conservation and restoration, supported by robust baselines, permanence safeguards and MRV. Thailand’s THB480 million (US$14.3 million) Blu Green Token began trading in July 2026, demonstrating a new route for financing mangrove restoration, but it has not yet proven the quality of its eventual credits.
Climate★★★
Economic★★★
Social★★★
Removal-type Credit Origination and Verification
Southeast Asia already has the natural assets, forests, peatlands, and mangroves, that could generate the kind of high-value carbon credit buyers actually want to pay more for. What is missing is the tools: better data, lower project risk, and fair treatment of local communities needed to prove these projects are genuinely removing carbon, not just avoiding emissions that might not have happened anyway.
- Satellite and on-the-ground data tools that measure the evidence needed to certify it as a removal credit
- Software that plugs a project's monitoring and verification data into a national carbon registry
- Financial modelling tool helping a project developer structure a removal-type project
- Platform managing community engagement and fair revenue-sharing with local communities
- Analytics tool that scores credit quality
Compliance Market Infrastructure and Credit Quality Market Making
In Indonesia, 563 power plants now face a real financial penalty if they do not comply with the new carbon market rules. But there is no product yet to help them do it. Also because trading is still so thin, it is hard to tell which credits are good quality and which are not. The opportunity is building the software that helps companies comply and buyers tell good credits from bad ones.
- Software that helps a power plant or factory track its emissions allowance and stay under quota
- Registry and credit issuance tool built for new national carbon market rules
- Measurement and verification software that gets a project ready for compliance-grade trading
- Checking tool that catches double-counted or fraudulent credits
- Credit tracking registry showing a credit's full history and making cross-border trading transparent
2
Government reporting platforms are commoditising the ESG data layer.
Public- and exchange-backed platforms are lowering basic emissions reporting costs without replacing specialist ESG systems. Bursa Malaysia’s CSI gives listed companies free ISSB tools and a calculate for Scopes 1 and 2. Singapore’s Gprnt offers SMEs free Scope 1–2 reporting. As ISSB-based frameworks spread across Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, these platforms are standardising national reporting baselines, not creating a single regional data layer.
Standalone vendors are now moving up. Malaysia's carbon-accounting startups include Asia's first PCAF-accredited financed-emissions software and registry-linked MRV tools, neither of which the free platform covers. In Singapore, the more established players offer integrated packages serving large caps, leaving a gap in mid-cap and Tier-2 assurance readiness and multi-carrier Scope 3 freight aggregation as new opportunities.
Climate★★★
Economic★★★
Social★★★
Beyond Baseline Emissions and Financed Emissions Software
Where basic emissions reporting is free, the opportunity is in the harder tasks existing platforms do not do, for example, tracking emissions across a company's whole supply chain, calculating the emissions a bank finances through its loans, and industry-specific carbon accounting.
- Tool that onboards a company's suppliers and pulls real freight data from multiple carriers, so a shipper can calculate its Scope 3 emissions.
- Tool for banks specifically: calculating the emissions financed through their loan book³
- Platform that links directly into national carbon registries
- Scoring tool that estimates a company's supply chain emissions from available data
- AI assistant that handles the paperwork for reporting beyond the free baseline
Assurance Readiness and Physical Climate Risk Analytics
A rule requiring independent sign-off on emissions reports is coming to Singapore by 2029, but only ~7% of smaller listed companies currently have that kind of verification in place, and the software built for big companies is too expensive for them. Tools for modelling physical climate risk fit the same opening and can offer value because free platforms do not do such analysis.
- Lighter, cheaper disclosure and assurance-readiness tool for mid-sized companies and smaller suppliers
- Measurement software precise enough to pass a third-party audit
- Dashboard modelling physical climate risk (floods, heat, storms, etc.) for a company's specific sites
- Auditing tool that goes beyond basic emissions reporting, checking energy use and carbon performance in depth
3
Climate risk is becoming a mandatory input to lending decisions.
Climate risk is moving from disclosure formality to lending prerequisite across Southeast Asia. Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Indonesia's Financial Services Authority (OJK) are converting climate stress-testing from voluntary to mandatory from 2026. MAS’s guidelines, effective from September 2027, encourage banks in the longer term to use primary rather than proxy emissions data that is more useful for decision-making.
OJK's rule shows the specific gap: banks must build physical climate risk into stress tests, but currently rely on sector averages rather than the asset-level data the rule requires. Also, readiness is lacking: as of September 2025, only 3 of 14 major ASEAN banks had run physical risk scenario analysis.
Climate★★★
Economic★★★
Social★★★
Facility-level Physical Risk Data and Scoring
Banks do not need broad, industry-wide climate risk estimates; they need to know the specific risk facing each building or site they have lent money against. The opportunity is building tools that calculate this using the same local hazard data regulators are asking banks to use, rather than repurposing generic global risk models that were not built for this.
- Scoring tool that rates the specific climate risk of each property or asset in a bank's loan book
- Dashboard showing a bank its risk exposure broken down by sector and location
- Modelling product built on local heat, flood and water stress data, calibrated to how these hazards are actually projected to worsen in a given country
- Data service with verified, primary emissions and physical risk figures for a borrower
Regulatory Compliance and Reporting Infrastructure
Wherever a mandate is moving faster than the market serving it – like in the case of Singapore and Indonesia here – it is a much easier sale than convincing a buyer they should want climate analytics in the first place. The regulator has already made the decision for them.
- Stress-test and scenario analysis reporting tools built to regulator-specific formats
- Transition planning compliance software for MAS-style guidelines
- Mid-market disclosure and assurance readiness tools for banks and suppliers below enterprise scale
- Credit risk system integrations translating climate data into lending decisions
- Transmission channel models translating physical hazards into credit and asset valuation metrics
4
Compliance carbon markets are being built and have limited trading volumes.
Southeast Asia's carbon market architecture is becoming real, but compliance demand and liquidity remain uneven. Malaysia's National Carbon Market Policy, launched April 2026, sets a roadmap for voluntary, compliance and Article 6 markets, with a planned registry and MRV framework creating opportunities for carbon accounting and verification providers.
Cross-border frameworks are advancing before domestic markets reach scale. Singapore has signed Article 6 Implementation Agreements with Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Laos, but no projects are listed yet.
Thailand's first JCM transfer to Japan moved 1,009 tCO₂e, proving the mechanism works end-to-end. Singapore's Climate Impact X provides exchange, auction, custody and price-discovery infrastructure, and can help scale transactions.
Climate★★★
Economic★★★
Social★★★
Emissions Data and MRV Infrastructure
Whether or not a country ever puts an actual price on carbon, companies across the region are already being required to report their emissions accurately. Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand are all rolling out mandatory disclosure and verification rules, and all of them need emissions data that can be trusted and checked.
- Carbon accounting software that keeps a company compliant
- Tool for banks specifically: calculating the emissions financed through their loan book
- Lighter, cheaper disclosure and verification tool for mid-sized companies and Tier-2 suppliers who cannot afford the enterprise platforms built for large listed companies
- Software that pulls real emissions data from multiple freight carriers into one report, solving the Scope 3 reporting problem for a shipper working with many transporters
Registry, Verification and Article 6 Market Infrastructure
When a country's own carbon market is not up and running yet, what keeps cross-border carbon credit deals trustworthy is the record-keeping behind them, tracking who owns a credit and making sure it is not double-counted.
- Digital measurement-and-verification platform that plugs directly into a country's official carbon registry
- Technical infrastructure, registry software, and a settlement system, that lets two countries' carbon markets actually exchange credits and money
- Checking tool that verifies a credit has not already been claimed or sold elsewhere
- Credit-tracking registry built on a shared, tamper-evident ledger, giving buyers a transparent record of a credit's origin and ownership history
Country Distribution
Where the 178 startups in this sector are headquartered across ASEAN-6.
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