Sector deep-dive

Transportation & Logistics

"The region's largest mitigation lever — and the foundation of resilience."

135

Companies

191

Top activity (Agriculture Processes)

1,148

Startups across SEA-6

Top Stories 2026

Across fuels, vehicles, freight and food logistics, the physical capacity to decarbonise mostly already exists. What is missing varies by segment: certification, financing, infrastructure, or the data to prove compliance.

Many of the technologies and much of the progress made are arriving from outside the region, rather than being built domestically. This dependency is itself a resilience risk.

A sector that imports its technology, capital and standards has less control over its own pace of decarbonisation, and less redundancy if any one external source slows down.

Cold-chain gaps are amplifying Southeast Asia's losses of perishable food.

Across Southeast Asia, inadequate post-harvest handling, storage and refrigeration prevent fruit, vegetables, seafood and other perishables from reaching buyers. Comparable regional data remain limited, but the underlying problem is clear: Globally, inadequate refrigeration is estimated to cause the loss of 12% of food production, with tropical and infrastructure-constrained markets particularly exposed. Extreme heat, humidity, flooding and unreliable power increase spoilage risks and raise the cost and energy required to maintain cold chains.

Cleantech Group’s 2026 outlook identifies cold chain innovation as a regional opportunity, including electric transport refrigeration, renewable-powered cold rooms and off-grid solar storage serving growers, fleets and warehouse operators. The commercial case depends on utilisation, power reliability, low-GWP refrigerants, maintenance and affordable finance.

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Cold Chain Infrastructure and Monitoring

Most networks are diesel-powered, poorly insulated and rarely monitored, which means spoilage is often invisible until the loss has already occurred.

Off-grid solar and biomass or waste-heat-powered cold storage for growers and aggregators in areas without reliable grid access
Electric transport refrigeration for perishables and grocery e-commerce
IoT temperature and spoilage prediction sensors paired with real-time, end-to-end supply chain visibility
Low-GWP refrigerant systems and leak-detection and monitoring tools
Thermal batteries and passive, phase-change cooling solutions for last-mile and off-grid segments where continuous power is unreliable
Refrigerant management to manage leaks and minimise operational losses

Financing Cold Chain Expansion

Cold storage and reefer assets are capital-intensive. The farmers and aggregators who most need them are rejected by conventional lenders if spoilage risk cannot be assessed and priced.

Spoilage-monitoring tech that turns "expected savings" into a verified number
Loan management software for aggregators, tracking farmer loans and cold-chain usage so lenders can underwrite on real data
Data and trigger engine behind parametric insurance: weather and spoilage inputs that calculate payouts automatically
KPI-tracking tools that let cold storage operators without a credit history prove performance against a sustainability-linked loan's terms
Underlying sensors and software for temperature, spoilage and traceability data that gives lenders something to price risk against

Southeast Asia's EV bottleneck is shifting from vehicles to the ecosystem around them.

Southeast Asia’s electric-car sales more than doubled to over 500,000 in 2025, approaching 20% of new-car sales (per IEA). Chinese brands and imports are drivers; in the case of Vietnam, so are VinFast’s growth and Chinese-owned local production. ASEAN accounts for 13% (US$1.2 billion) of China’s global EV exports, led by Thailand and the Philippines. Following consumer complaints, Thailand now requires disclosure of battery specifications, warranties, prices and tested range.

The emerging constraint is the enabling ecosystem. Charging access, household connection capacity, after-sales support and affordable finance remain uneven. One analysis estimates that 92% of Indonesian residential customers lack adequate power supply for home charging. Indonesia’s electric two-wheeler lenders also price technology, battery durability and resale value uncertainty into financing.

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Financing Structures for Fleet and Consumer EV Transition

EVs are increasingly cost-competitive. What is missing is the capital structure to get them into the hands of fleet operators who cannot self-fund the upfront cost.

Telematics and contract data software that lets lenders underwrite EV loans against logistics contract cashflows and even battery health
MRV and credit-issuance software that automates carbon-credit e-bus financing model, so smaller transit authorities can access it without bespoke advisory
Battery-swap networks and subscription software for two-wheelers, separating battery ownership from the vehicle itself
Charging and depot energy management software that turns charging infrastructure into its own trackable, financeable asset
Route optimisation software, bundled with shuttle financing

Vehicle and Battery Performance Data Infrastructure

Lenders cannot price a risk they cannot see. The absence of standardised data on vehicle and battery performance is a part of why EV financing remains expensive or unavailable.

Used EV and commercial battery health and residual value diagnostics
Multi-OEM charging interoperability addressing protocol fragmentation
Managed residential and depot charging platforms addressing the grid-supply constraint directly
Mixed-fleet telematics generating the battery health data
Battery materials traceability tools for OEMs

Southeast Asia is building Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) capacity, but supply is not yet reliable.

Neste’s Singapore refinery and EcoCeres’ Johor, Malaysia plant are producers. In Indonesia, Pertamina’s Cilacap refinery has demonstrated UCO (Used Cooking Oil) based SAF.

Thailand introduced a 1% blend in 2026 and Singapore’s levy will support a 1% uplift from 2027; Malaysia and Indonesia have announced or proposed targets.

HEFA (Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids) producers compete for waste oils and lipids, while cost and uncertain offtake constrain utilisation. Feedstock scarcity creates a verification challenge and aggregation opportunity. Europe imported 80% of the UCO it consumed as transport fuel in 2022, largely from Asia, raising concerns that some cargoes contained mislabelled virgin oils.

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Feedstock Traceability and Certification

CORSIA (Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation by International Civil Aviation Organization) requires certified supply chain operators and auditable sustainability information. SAFCo (Singapore Sustainable Aviation Fuel Company), a Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) non-profit entity, will procure from suppliers meeting standards such as CORSIA.

Upstream process documentation platforms for EU Regulation 2025/2181 compliance
Batch-level chain-of-custody verification that extends beyond the claim-level scope IATA's CADO SAF Registry already covers
Palm residue-to-SAF process tech licensing, converting palm fatty acid distillate and palm kernel shells into a feedstock
Import registration and process audit trail tool for cross-border used cooking oil aggregation between countries
Feedstock integrity monitoring for a producer's access to Singapore's SAFCo procurement and CORSIA eligibility

Compliance and Financing Tools for Airlines

The carriers with the thinnest margins are the ones getting hit with compliance costs first. But the tools to manage those costs are priced for big airlines that can afford custom advisory.

Self-serve CORSIA reporting platform for low-cost and second-tier carriers
Carbon credit marketplace, letting carriers buy CORSIA-eligible credits directly and automatically
Software that coordinates SAF supply and blending logistics to secondary airports
Route-level calculator that shows a carrier exactly what CORSIA offsetting will cost them per route
Fuel-efficiency analytics for flag carriers and second-tier operators still on legacy systems

Scope 3 mandates are creating demand independent of fleet electrification.

From financial year 2026, Singapore's Singapore Exchange Regulation (SGX RegCo) and Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) require Straits Times Index constituents to disclose Scope 3 emissions, explicitly including freight and logistics outsourced to third parties. Malaysia's Bursa National Sustainability Reporting Framework requires Scope 3 reporting from 2028 depending on company category Malaysia-listed companies become a further buyer segment for the same carbon data tools.

Both mandates compel measurement rather than emissions reduction, driving demand for freight carbon data tools regardless of how quickly fleets electrify. Shippers cannot comply without primary activity data from their logistics providers. Yet most mid-market manufacturers lack the tools to collect it and most regional carriers lack the systems to generate it on request.

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Primary Carbon Data Infrastructure for Freight

The compliance problem is less about the accounting tools, but more about the tools not being built around actual, verifiable activity data rather than modelled estimates.

Multi-carrier Scope 3 platform pulling actual fuel, distance and load data from carrier telematics or APIs (not modelled tonne-km averages like existing tools)
Low-cost data capture tool, hardware (plus software) for smaller carriers, feeding directly into that platform

Downstream Tools Built on Verified Carbon Data

Once primary carbon data exists, it becomes an input other tools can build on, extending the mandate's commercial reach well beyond compliance reporting itself.

Digital freight matching and load consolidation with emissions tracking, generating fuel savings ahead of vehicle electrification
Biodiesel and HVO (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil) blend compliance tracking tied to verified carbon data
Carbon-linked SME fleet financing that uses verified per-shipment data to price transition risk more accurately
Corporate Scope 3 supplier engagement tools to help shippers onboard fragmented, multi-carrier logistics networks
Route optimisation and multi-route contingency planning that repurpose the same carbon dataset to build resilience against climate-driven and geopolitical disruptions