**14. Conclusion**

world could face a shortage of woody biomass as well as its ecosystem functioning can be adversely affected leading to the risk of its sustainable development. The region has strong‐ ly reacted and enforced laws against deforestation and forest degradation. Rehabilitation and plantation programs have been initiated resulting in the recovery of about 0.1% of the 2.4 million ha deforested land. It is claimed that use of woody biomass to replace fossil fuel for energy generation could prevent carbon emission of about 169.0−281.7 *TgC per year*, where one tetragram carbon (TgC) is one million tons of carbon, between 1990 and 2020 [95]. A case study of household energy demand of a rural community and its electrification in Lao People's Democratic Republic was conducted. Prior to electrification 99% of the primary energy demand was met with firewood. Only 75% of villages used commercial lighting fuels while 25% have no access to this fuel and therefore are not engaged with entrepreneurial activities. These families were wasting thousands of hours of productive time each year which could be used to improve their families' living conditions through education and saf‐ er time-saving work if they could have access of about three hours of lighting per day indi‐ cating the importance of energy and its impact on the lives of rural people. A proper management of forests could solve these very simple problems of the rural communities

Biofuels are growing steadily in ASEAN countries which are extracted from sugarcane and cassava; 75% of the current biethanol production in Thailand is from cassava. Thailand is the largest producer of bioethanol with517 *Ml per year*, followed by Philippines (116 *Ml per year*) Indonesia (77 *Ml per year*) and Singapore (34 *Ml per year*). The international energy agency (IEA) stated that Thailand will continue to lead ethanol production in ASEAN countries for the next three years to achieve an expected annual production of 1276 *Ml* in 2012 while In‐ donesia and Philippines production will further increase to 355 *Ml* and 332 *Ml*, respectively in 2012. Malaysia and Vietnam do not produce ethanol for use in the transport sector [48 & 97]. Palm oil is the main feedstock for biodiesel production in this region of the world with an average biodiesel yield in the range of 4, 000−4, 700 *l per ha* (FAO 2008). Literature states that Thailand led in the production of biodiesel in the year 2009 with a quantity of 625 *Ml* while Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines produced 243 *Ml*, 203 *Ml* and 96 *Ml* respec‐ tively, whereas Singapore had a comparatively small output of 48 *Ml*. A steady increase in the production of biodiesel for the next three years is predicted led by Thailand with an an‐ nual output of 955 *Ml* in 2012, followed by Singapore with an expected increase in produc‐ tion by almost twentyfold to 946 *Ml per year*. This increase is due to a large plant which is currently under construction capable of increasing the country's capacity by900 *Ml per year*. The expected increase of biodiesel in Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines lies in the range of

There is a huge potential for increasing the power efficiency of energy plants. This can be done by increasing steam parameters and installed power in cogeneration plants and reduc‐ ing consumption in process. Biogas can be generated from the anaerobic treatment of the liquid effluents of the process and its conversion into electricity using internal combustion engines or micro-turbines. The extraction methodologies used to extract cooking oil and bio‐ fuels from biomass could be modified to increase the efficiency [98]. This can be done with

and enhance their productivity [96].

44 Sustainable Energy - Recent Studies

*25-60%* [49, 97]*.*

The results presented in the literature on the development of bioenegy in ASEAN and de‐ velopment of CDM projects in this part of the world reveal that this region of the globe could lead the world in bioenergy with a unified community where all member countries concentrate on collective resources of biomass; member countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and The Philippines) share technological expertise with developing member coun‐ tries (Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Vietnam). Developed countries could provide training to cater a skilled workforce for the developing community and centralized research and de‐ velopment centres for biomass and bioenergy technologies. Singapore, and Malaysia could initiate in setting up bio-refineries and MSW treatment (waster-to-energy) plants; and re‐ gional collaboration on development and utilization of unified bioenergy resources. With these collective and integrated efforts this region would not only become energy sufficient using bioenergy resources but lead the world in this area. Lim and Lee [94] proposed a dia‐ mond framework for ASEAN biomass bioenergy cooperation that provides an ideal unified framework for this community to work together and this would lead the ASEAN countries towards leadership in bioenergy where the developing members as well as developed ones are to play their roles to achieve energy as well as social sustainability.
