Southeast Asia is becoming a critical region for climate and energy innovation, but it’s often misunderstood.
In this conversation, Tim McCaffery (SCG) speaks with Gina Domanig about what’s driving the shift toward renewables in the region, from decarbonization to the rapidly falling cost of solar, and why distributed energy matters.
He also shares practical insights on what it takes for startups to operate across ASEAN: 10 countries, different business cultures, and very different regulatory environments. Approaching it as a single market rarely works.
The discussion highlights how long-term collaboration — including structured programs (like Emerald Sprints) and on-the-ground partnership — can help teams build capability while gaining real access to local markets.
Full Transcript:
Gina: At SCG, you guys have been focusing on renewable energy. What are the main drivers for this push for innovation in this area in Southeast Asia?
Tim: So the push for renewables is to help obviously decarbonization but as the costs of solar have come down it is the cheapest form of power that you can deploy and it’s distributed.
Gina: And we’ve been partnering now for years. And what do you think a partner like Emerald could bring to the region?
Tim: Emerald Sprints have helped us to identify companies that we otherwise wouldn’t have found. We have seconded employees to Emerald on multiple occasions and run training programs with Emerald. And all of those programs combined have helped me to have the team grow in capability, in culture, and while also being able to have access to the startups which is the important part of what we do.
Gina: And going to the startups. Can you name a few or have there been a few examples in areas where you would say that actually led you to take another step forward in the corporation?
Tim: Yeah, one of the early engagements we had with a company called Rondo which makes a thermal battery system, came through an Emerald Sprint back in 2020. We subsequently made an investment in Rondo Series A, followed on in multiple rounds with Rondo and most recently, we’ve built a 33 megawatt hour Rondo heat battery based in Thailand. And so we’ve taken the company from investment through manufacturing scale-up to actual tech deployment.
Gina: Fantastic. So going back to Southeast Asia, what are the trends or the technologies that you’re most excited about?
Tim: So SCG, our fund, we look at energy generation, energy storage, and those are the primary areas in the renewable sector. For trends we are looking at obviously the AI data centers are a growth area for the world and they’re going to be consuming a lot of power both to run the data center and also cooling. So we are evaluating cooling technologies. Cooling means the whole data center cooling all the way down to cooling on the chip. So there are multiple cooling technologies that will need to be deployed.
Gina: So there’s tons of opportunities for startups really to look into a growing market that’s pushing towards climate tech related innovation. What advice would you give startups that want to enter into the Southeast Asian market?
Tim: Southeast Asia is 10 countries in the ASEAN trading bloc. Those countries all have different business cultures, different government forms. And finding a company that can help you to localize in all of those countries all at once is the best way to go. Otherwise you are going to face multiple challenges in every single country that you try and enter. Many companies will just go to Singapore and then call it good. But Singapore is a small market. You can do trading from Singapore, but to really gain access to the large market. The ASEAN market overall is about the size of Europe in terms of number of people and overall economy size. And it’s growing at anywhere between 6% upwards depending on the country. So, it is a big whale to tackle. And I would find a partner.
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