This post opens our 2026 blog series on technology, sustainability, and economic development.
Climate action is entering a phase where complexity and scrutiny are rising at the same time. Targets and pledges continue to multiply, yet trust is thinner, implementation is uneven, and claims are harder to validate across supply chains and real economy systems. In this context, technologies – such as remote sensing and satellite monitoring, sensors and digital control systems, traceability and reporting platforms across supply chains, and AI enabled analytics – are becoming essential tools for making outcomes measurable, improving operational efficiency, and strengthening low-emission development competitiveness.
However, the results of technology are not uniformly positive or scalable. Success depends on whether technologies move beyond pilots with the right foundations in place, such as clean power, interoperable data, and credible governance. Even then, gains can be partially offset by second-order effects: efficiency improvements that lower unit costs but drive higher overall usage, or rising electricity demand from data centres that erodes net savings. This blog series will re-examine these tensions throughout 2026, using quantitative evidence to assess whether technology delivers measurable impact, where it falls short, and how enabling conditions shape outcomes across the wider economy.
Climate strategy is entering a more demanding phase as global momentum becomes less predictable and attention shifts from target setting to implementation. The Paris Agreement moved into a new round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in 2025, intended to translate long term net zero goals into nearer term national priorities, yet progress remains uneven, and 95% submissions missed the February deadline.[i], [ii], [iii], [iv] At the same time, policy is becoming more operational and market-linked. Carbon pricing continues to expand in coverage and fiscal salience, while trade and supply-chain rules shift beyond voluntary disclosure and place greater weight on credible reporting, verification, and accountability.[v]
This shift is visible in concrete measures. The EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism entered its definitive regime on 1 January 2026, increasing the practical importance of embedded emissions reporting for covered imports.[vi] The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, in force since July 2024, strengthens expectations for firms to identify and address environmental impacts across value chains.[vii] And the EU Deforestation Rules (EUDR) continue to push traceability and due diligence for land use commodities.[viii], [ix] Together, these developments point to the same conclusion: ambition still matters, but the binding constraint is increasingly delivery. Climate action must be measurable, verifiable, and workable in practice, which is why technology is becoming central.
Technology is no longer optional for sustainability delivery. Many of the largest, most scalable opportunities are technology mediated because they depend on better information, tighter operational control, and coordinated decisions across complex systems. For example, Access Partnership’s New Nature Economy: Asia’s Next Wave report identifies 59 nature-positive business opportunities that could unlock around USD 4.3 trillion in business value and create over 230 million jobs. Many are technology-linked, including food loss and waste reduction through cold chain sensors, blockchain traceability, and logistics analytics, as well as precision agriculture and fisheries through satellite imagery, farm and vessel sensors, and decision support tools.[x]
In practice, technology increasingly underpins how climate and nature commitments are implemented in three ways that show up repeatedly across sectors:
In a trust-constrained landscape, measurement and verification are becoming decisive. Across manufacturing, power generation, and agriculture-linked supply chains, the practical ceiling for decarbonisation is increasingly set by what can be measured and verified at the asset level and across value chains, not just by stated ambition. New tools are expanding the scale, frequency, and independence of measurement, including remote sensing, AI, and mobile-enabled data capture that reduces reliance on self-disclosure and lowers the friction of data collection.
Climate TRACE illustrates this shift by using remote sensing techniques and AI to estimate emissions across major sources and sectors.[xi] For methane, for example, research work has shown that satellite-based monitoring systems can detect, identify, and track super emitting sources – precisely because remote sensing enables systematic detection at scale rather than relying solely on site-level disclosure.[xii],[xiii]
In land use and agriculture linked commodities, where accountability is fragmented across thousands of producers, intermediaries, and trading relationships, traceability plays a complementary role as measurement infrastructure. It links products to where they were produced and who traded them, so exposure and risk can be compared and acted on. Trase, for example, maps trade links between consumer markets, via trading companies, back to subnational regions of production using public and purchasable data, making exposure more visible and comparable for procurement, risk screening, and oversight.[xiv]
In mines and process industries, digitalisation turns equipment and processes into data streams that can be monitored continuously and optimised more systematically, improving efficiency and resilience while reducing emissions. As the International Energy Agency (IEA) has noted, digital technologies can improve energy and material efficiency, and reduce emissions across end-use sectors, in addition to the power system.[xv]
Electrification adds another layer. By replacing on-site fuel burning for heat or power with electric technologies, emissions shift upstream to the power sector and processes often become more energy-efficient. As grids decarbonise over time, the emissions intensity of electrified processes falls further.[xvi]
In power systems, efficiency refers to converting clean generation into reliable, usable electricity at scale. As variable renewables such as solar and wind expand, constraints shift from building generation to managing variability in both supply and demand through forecasting, automation, and system coordination.[xvii],[xviii] Smart grids enable this operating layer, using digital technologies, sensors, and software to match supply and demand while maintaining stability.[xix] Demand response, alongside smart grids and storage, helps manage variable renewables and rising electricity demand without forcing the system to lean on inefficient backup generation.[xx]
Southeast Asia demonstrates why this matters. Fossil fuels have met nearly 80% of the region’s rising energy demand since 2010, and, in 2023, coal still generated half of its electricity while accounting for the majority of power sector emissions.[xxi] In that context, efficiency and system upgrades matter because they reduce the amount of energy needed to support growth, easing pressure on coal heavy power systems and making emissions reductions more achievable. Under ASEAN Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation (APAEC) 2016 – 2025, ASEAN set a target to reduce energy intensity by 32 % in 2025 relative to 2005 levels,[xxii] and under APAEC 2026 to 2030, it increased ambition further, including a 40% energy intensity reduction from 2005 levels and a 45% renewable electricity share by 2030.[xxiii]
Technology supports low-emission economic development by strengthening resilience, protecting competitiveness, and reducing transaction costs.
On resilience, electrification, efficiency, and renewables reduce exposure to fossil fuel price volatility – an important benefit for fuel-importing economies and energy-intensive sectors that face global price shocks. As the IEA has noted, energy transitions reduce exposure to fuel price volatility and can bring down energy bills. [xxiv]
On competitiveness, technology increasingly determines whether firms can participate smoothly in markets where emissions evidence is becoming a condition of trade. The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, for example, increases the practical value of credible embedded emissions data and associated reporting systems.[xxv] In this setting, digital measurement, reporting, and verification capabilities are not just compliance overhead; they are becoming part of export readiness and supply-chain risk management.
Finally, technology reduces transaction costs by narrowing the information gaps that drive duplicated audits, inconsistent questionnaires, and disputed claims across complex supply chains. Traceability systems are a concrete example, combining commodity production and trade data using material flow analysis to map supply chains linking production to the consumer market. Better visibility allows procurement, finance, and oversight to target the most material risks, rather than dispersing effort across low-value compliance work.[xxvi]
Even if technology is a clear enabler, evidence that it delivers emissions reduction at scale remains mixed, and adoption is uneven. Many solutions still sit in pilots or early deployment, and scaling is often constrained by integration costs, data quality, interoperability, skills, and governance. As a result, the same technology can look transformative in a controlled setting, yet deliver smaller gains when rolled out across fragmented supply chains and institutions.
Empirical findings point to benefits, but with important caveats. Cross-country panel evidence using AI patents as a proxy for AI capability finds significant emissions reductions.[xxvii] Patent-based studies on green technology innovation also find reduction effects, but with a clear income-threshold pattern, implying that enabling conditions shape whether innovation translates into broad outcomes.[xxviii] Meta analysis linking technology adoption to energy intensity finds an overall negative relationship, while highlighting wide variation across contexts and study designs.[xxix]
The mixed picture is partly explained by countervailing effects. Innovation can trigger rebound and system-wide impacts that erode expected emissions savings and exacerbate existing social inequality, risks flagged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).[xxx] AI illustrates why these offsets matter: GPU-dense data centres draw large, continuous electricity loads and require intensive cooling, increasing power demand and water use, while adding embodied emissions from construction and chip manufacturing. The IEA projects global data-centre electricity use will more than double by 2030, with AI a major driver.[xxxi] Net outcomes will therefore hinge on whether efficiency gains outweigh induced demand, whether electricity supply decarbonises fast enough to offset rising digital loads, and whether governance addresses distributional risks rather than assuming technology benefits diffuse automatically.
In the next few blog posts, we will move from framing the narrative to evidence, looking at what the data says about where technology is making the biggest difference, and where outcomes are still constrained by implementation. We will focus on three practical channels: measurement and verification, efficiency and productivity, and low-emission economic development.
Across these areas, the guiding questions are straightforward: when does technology deliver measurable climate progress, what enables adoption to scale beyond pilots, and what conditions determine whether technology strengthens competitiveness and resilience while supporting broader low-emission development?
At Access Partnership, we offer deep expertise at the intersection of sustainability, climate policy, and economic development. Here are a selection of insights that demonstrate the breadth of our reach and experience.
[i] United Nations Climate Change (n.d.), “Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)”. Available at: https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/nationally-determined-contributions-ndcs
[ii] Jamal Srouji, Héctor Miguel Donado, Natalia Alayza, and Ginette Walls (2025), “Despite Some Progress, Countries’ New Climate Plans Largely Fall Short”, World Resources Institute. Available at: https://www.wri.org/insights/assessing-2025-ndcs
[iii] OECD (2025), “Investing in Climate for Growth and Development”. Available at: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2025/06/investing-in-climate-for-growth-and-development_9ce9b093.html
[iv] Carbon Brief (2025), “Analysis: 95% of countries miss UN deadline to submit 2035 climate pledges”. Available at: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-95-of-countries-miss-un-deadline-to-submit-2035-climate-pledges/
[v] World Bank Group (2025), “State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2025”. Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/state-and-trends-of-carbon-pricing
[vi] European Commission (n.d), “Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism”. Available at: https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/carbon-border-adjustment-mechanism_en
[vii] European Commission (n.d), “Corporate sustainability due diligence”. Available at: https://commission.europa.eu/business-economy-euro/doing-business-eu/sustainability-due-diligence-responsible-business/corporate-sustainability-due-diligence_en
[viii] European Parliament (2025), “Deforestation law: Parliament adopts changes to postpone and simplify measures”. Available at: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20251211IPR32168/deforestation-law-parliament-adopts-changes-to-postpone-and-simplify-measures
[ix] Elisavet Diamantopoulou (2025), “What is EUDR due diligence and what are the requirements for companies (Updated Dec 2025)”. Available at: https://www.coolset.com/academy/eudr-due-diligence-requirements-explained-what-companies-need-to-prove-ox7iv
[x] Temasek, World Economic Forum, and AlphaBeta (Access Partnership) (2021), “New Nature Economy: Asia’s Next Wave”. Available at: https://accesspartnership.com/reports/asias-next-wave/
[xi] Climate TRACE. Available at: https://climatetrace.org/
[xii] Mostafa, Mehrdad Seyed, and Ke Du “Satellite-Based Methane Emission Monitoring: A Review Across Industries.” Remote Sensing. Available at: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/17/22/3674
[xiii] Schuit et al. (2023), “Automated detection and monitoring of methane super-emitters using satellite data”, Atmos. Chem. Phys. Available at: https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/23/9071/2023/
[xiv] Trase (n.d), “Supply chain methodology”. Available at: https://trase.earth/methodology/supply-chains-methodology
[xv] IEA (n.d), “Digitalisation”. Available at: https://www.iea.org/energy-system/decarbonisation-enablers/digitalisation
[xvi] IEA (n.d), “Electrification”. Available at: https://www.iea.org/energy-system/electricity/electrification
[xvii] IEA (2024), “Integrating Solar and Wind”. Available at:https://www.iea.org/reports/integrating-solar-and-wind/executive-summary
[xviii] IEA (2025), “Integrating Solar and Wind in Southeast Asia”. Available at: https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/b0b39b60-8686-4043-b060-1f7655e7536c/IntegratingsolarandwindinSoutheastAsia.pdf
[xix] IEA (n.d), “Smart Grids”. Available at: https://www.iea.org/energy-system/electricity/smart-grids
[xx] IEA (n.d), “Demand Response”. Available at: https://www.iea.org/energy-system/energy-efficiency-and-demand/demand-response
[xxi] IEA (2024), “Southeast Asia Energy Outlook 2024”. Available at: https://www.iea.org/reports/southeast-asia-energy-outlook-2024/executive-summary
[xxii] APAEC Drafting Committee (ADC) and ASEAN Centre for Energy (ACE) (2020), “Asean Plan of Action For Energy Cooperation (APAEC) 2016-2025”. Available at: https://asean.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/ASEAN-Plan-of-Action-for-Energy-Cooperation-APAEC-2016-2025-Phase-II-2021-2025.pdf
[xxiii] Reuters (2025), “ASEAN endorses action plan to increase renewable electricity share to 45% by 2030”. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/asean-endorses-action-plan-increase-renewable-electricity-share-45-by-2030-2025-10-16/
[xxiv] IEA (2022), “World Energy Outlook 2022”. Available at: https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2022/energy-security-in-energy-transitions
[xxv] European Commission (n.d.), “Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism”. Available at: https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/carbon-border-adjustment-mechanism_en
[xxvi] Razak, G. M., Hendry, L. C., & Stevenson, M. (2023), “Supply chain traceability: a review of the benefits and its relationship with supply chain resilience”, Production Planning & Control. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09537287.2021.1983661
[xxvii] Cao, Qingfeng, Chuenyu Chi, and Junhui Shan (2025), “Can artificial intelligence technology reduce carbon emissions? A global perspective.” Energy Economics. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108285
[xxviii] Du, Kerui, Pengzhen Li, and Zheming Yan (2019), “Do green technology innovations contribute to carbon dioxide emission reduction? Empirical evidence from patent data.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2019.06.010
[xxix] Vu, Thu Thi-Thu, and Binyam Afewerk Demena (2025). “How does technology adoption affect energy intensity? Evidence from a meta-analysis.” Applied Energy. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2025.126439
[xxx] IPCC (n.d.), “Chapter 16: Innovation, technology development and transfer”. Available at: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/chapter/chapter-16/
[xxxi] IEA (2025), “Energy and AI”. Available at: https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/executive-summary
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