EA’s Green Energy Playbook: Electrifying Trucks and Buses Could Cut a Quarter of Thailand’s Carbon Emissions

▶ Watch on YouTube — “เปิดสูตรสำเร็จ EA ขับเคลื่อน Green Energy” by กรุงเทพธุรกิจ (Bangkok Business), 13 minutes.

Who’s Talking, and Why It Matters

The talk came from Wasu Klomkliang, Executive Vice President of Energy Absolute Public Company Limited (EA), speaking at the Go Green 2024: The Ambition of Thailand seminar hosted by Bangkok Business (Krungthep Turakij) in April 2024. EA is Thailand’s largest private clean-energy conglomerate, spanning solar and wind power, batteries, and electric buses and ferries.

His pitch wasn’t about passenger EVs — it was about the parts of Thailand’s carbon problem nobody puts on a billboard: diesel trucks, city buses, river ferries, and jet fuel.

Where Thailand’s Carbon Actually Comes From

Thailand emitted about 243 million tons of carbon last year, according to the figures Klomkliang cited, with transportation and energy generation as the two biggest sources. Transportation alone accounted for 81.2 million tons — roughly a third of the national total.

That framing sets up his real argument: Thailand is well positioned to electrify heavy transport specifically, for reasons that have nothing to do with subsidies. The grid has spare capacity — EV makers entering the market haven’t hit power shortages — and Thailand’s auto-parts industry already builds suspensions, chassis components, and other running gear used in EV trucks and buses, even though it doesn’t build engines.

The Math on Trucks and Buses

Thailand has about 1.2 million registered large trucks and buses, per the figures in the talk. Converting that fleet to electric could cut vehicle-class emissions by 37% for trucks and 34% for buses — a combined roughly 50 million tons of carbon a year, or about a quarter of the country’s total emissions.

These are EA’s own estimates, presented at a seminar rather than published in a peer-reviewed study — treat the 50-million-ton figure as a directional argument for where to focus, not an audited number.

What EA Has Actually Built

Beyond the pitch, EA already operates electric buses in Bangkok through what it calls the Bangkok E-Bus Programme, run with routes serving Thai Smile Bus and its subsidiaries. The Asian Development Bank financed EA’s purchase of up to 1,200 e-buses through a 3.9 billion baht loan, part of a joint Thailand-Switzerland programme targeting 2,000 electric buses in Bangkok by 2030 — a slower timeline than the “more than 2,000 already running” figure Klomkliang gave in the talk, which is worth reading as a company projection rather than a verified count.

EA has also run electric shuttle routes on university campuses at Chulalongkorn and Phayao, and said it planned to expand into EV trucks. On the water, its e-ferries on the Chao Phraya River each cut about 200 tons of carbon a year; a fleet of 44 would cut roughly 8,800 tons, per the figures cited.

Green Diesel, Green Ports, and Jet Fuel

The talk’s least-obvious argument was about fuels that don’t fit a battery — ships and planes. Global marine shipping burns about 65 million tons of diesel a year; switching to green (bio-hydrogenated) diesel could cut the sulfur released into that fuel’s exhaust from about 9.7 million tons to 2.2 million tons annually, Klomkliang said, and ship operators would skip the cost of installing sulfur scrubbers.

Aviation got the same treatment. Global aircraft emissions run around 1 billion tons of carbon a year from roughly 300 million tons of jet fuel. The International Civil Aviation Organization has set a ramp for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) blending — starting near 2% and climbing toward 40% by 2040 — and swapping conventional Jet A-1 for SAF can cut a flight’s carbon footprint by roughly 80%, according to the figures cited in the talk.

Thailand’s opening here, Klomkliang argued, is crude palm oil (CPO): the country is one of the world’s top three producers, giving it feedstock capacity for SAF and green diesel that few countries can match. The catch is reputational — European buyers have pushed back on CPO over deforestation concerns, and Thailand would need a coordinated government push to make the case that its palm oil supply chain doesn’t carry that risk.

Thai Context: What’s Changed Since This Talk

This seminar ran in April 2024. Two things in Klomkliang’s framing are now out of date, and one of Thailand’s clean-energy incentive programs has moved substantially since.

Thailand’s net-zero target moved up 15 years. The talk cites carbon neutrality by 2050 and net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2065 — that was the standing target at the time. In November 2025, Thailand’s cabinet approved an updated Nationally Determined Contribution that moved the net-zero deadline to 2050, matching the carbon-neutrality target instead of trailing it by 15 years. The new pledge also commits to a 47% cut in net emissions by 2035 from 2019 levels.

EV incentives have been revised twice since. The “EV 3.0, 3.5” measures mentioned in the talk have since been updated — the current EV 3.5 package cuts excise tax on qualifying electric vehicles from 8% to 2% and requires manufacturers to build two domestic vehicles for every imported unit sold under the scheme in 2026, rising to three in 2027. Commercial fleet operators buying domestically built electric trucks and buses can deduct twice the vehicle’s purchase price against taxable income.

Electricity and grid context. Klomkliang’s point about spare grid capacity holds up under Thailand’s broader energy policy — the country’s Power Development Plan has been pushing more gas generation and renewable buildout (solar farms, wind farms, rooftop and floating solar) specifically to keep pace with electrification demand, including from EVs and industry.

Green Airports and Green Tourism

EA also described a partnership with Thailand’s Airports of Thailand (AOT) to build out what it calls “Green Airport” infrastructure — rooftop solar, battery storage, EV ground vehicles, and EV charging — at Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang, which together handle around 74 million passengers a year. A parallel push in Phuket pairs airport solar with EV chargers already installed, EV tourist transport, planned e-ferry routes, and a waste-to-energy plant, positioning green tourism as a growth driver for the province once pandemic-era travel demand fully recovered.

Key Takeaways

• Transportation makes up about a third of Thailand’s carbon emissions, and heavy trucks and buses — not passenger cars — are the segment with the biggest single carbon-cutting potential.
• Electrifying Thailand’s 1.2 million large trucks and buses could cut roughly 50 million tons of carbon a year, by EA’s own estimate — treat that as directional, not audited.
• Thailand accelerated its net-zero target from 2065 to 2050 in November 2025, well after this talk was recorded.
• Green diesel and sustainable aviation fuel target ships and planes, where batteries don’t work — Thailand’s palm oil supply is a potential feedstock advantage, complicated by EU deforestation concerns.
• EV incentive rules (EV 3.5) have shifted twice since 2024, now requiring higher local production ratios for imported EVs sold in Thailand.

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