The OECD, the Government of Thailand and the National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC) are collaborating on an industry decarbonisation project focusing on the petrochemicals and the plastics value chain. The project builds on the implementation of the OECD’s Framework for industry’s net-zero transition, which is a step-by-step approach to assist EMDEs in designing solutions for financing and for improving the enabling conditions for industry’s net-zero transition.
Launched in February 2024, the project has carried out a technical analysis on 10 low-carbon routes to inform and prepare for ‘Step 3’ of the Framework on ‘Business cases and pipeline of projects’. This step of the Framework consists in conducting economic assessments for a selection of low-carbon options, and how these compare to conventional production routes (i.e., fossil-fuel based production routes).
A virtual workshop was held in April 2024 to gather feedback from stakeholders across the petrochemicals and plastics value chain. Conclusions and stakeholders’ feedback resulted in the selection of 3 options for the next step of the Framework implementation:
- Biomass to bio-ethanol to bio-olefins
- Biomass to bio-based and biodegradable plastics (e.g., PLA, PBS, TPS)
- Carbon capture and storage (CCS)
The results of the ‘Step 3’ of the Framework on ‘Business cases and pipeline of projects’ were presented at the 2nd Project Meeting in Bangkok on the 15th of November 2024.
The objectives of the 3rd Project Meeting were:
- to provide a summary of the economic assessments (‘Step 3’ of the Framework) conducted for the 3 low-carbon options,
- to present and discuss the results of the ‘Step 4’ of the Framework on ‘Market and financing solutions’. This covered financing instruments and enabling conditions which could support the deployment of the selected low-carbon options,
- to share the preliminary recommendations to support the implementation of these options, in preparation of the country report.