Public opinion across Southeast Asia is divided over artificial intelligence (AI)’s environmental impact, with 47.9 percent of respondents viewing AI positively but 30.2 percent holding negative views, while 21.9 percent say they lack enough knowledge to assess its environmental costs and benefits, a survey launched by the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute showed on Thursday.

According to the Southeast Asia Climate Outlook Survey Report 2026, regional respondents are more likely to view AI positively, with 27.2 percent seeing it as somewhat good and 20.7 percent as clearly good, than negatively, with 17.2 percent seeing it as somewhat bad and 13 percent as clearly bad.

However, 21.9 percent say they do not know enough about AI’s environmental costs or benefits to judge, indicating that public understanding of its footprint is still developing.

Respondents in Laos (45.7 percent), Cambodia (33.7 percent), and Vietnam (33.1 percent) are most likely to view AI as clearly good for the environment.

Those from Brunei are the most sceptical: 35.4 percent see AI as clearly bad, while only 1 percent view it as clearly good.

Uncertainty is also uneven. Around a third of respondents in Myanmar (35.6 percent) and Brunei (31.8 percent) lack sufficient knowledge to judge, compared with approximately a fifth in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Education shows a clear pattern respondents’ choices. Respondents with the highest education levels are least likely to regard AI as clearly good: 11.4 percent of master’s degree holders and 11.8 percent of doctoral degree holders, compared with 38 percent of those with no formal education and 36.1 percent with primary education.

Bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree holders are also more sceptical, with between a third and nearly half seeing AI as somewhat or clearly bad for the environment.

This suggests that greater familiarity with AI, and possibly its energy demands, is associated with more critical assessments of its environmental impact.

Meanwhile, rising energy prices and the cost of living dominate the region’s concerns regarding its transition to renewable energy and the phase-down of fossil fuels (44.6 percent).

This is followed by concerns over energy shortages as the second major issue (26.1 percent).

Cambodia stands out as the main exception, where concerns over energy shortages (36.9 percent) slightly exceed concerns over rising energy prices and the cost of living (35.9 percent).

Brunei is another notable outlier. The country records the highest proportion of respondents who do not foresee negative impacts from the energy transition (26.1 percent), more than three times the ASEAN average (7.6 percent).

Compared with the 2024 survey, the share of respondents concerned about rising energy prices and the cost of living fell from 52.4 percent in 2024 to 44.6 percent in 2026.

At the same time, concern over energy shortages increased steadily, from 20.3 percent in 2024 to 26.1 percent in 2026.

In general, these concerns might reflect the energy shock disruptions caused by geopolitical events in the preceding years.

Concern over rising energy prices and the cost of living generally increases with age. The share of respondents mentioning this issue increases from 38.6 percent among respondents in the youngest age group (16–21) to 49.7 percent in the oldest age group (above 60).

By contrast, younger respondents are more concerned about job losses and widening social inequality, decreasing from 14.4 percent for both issues among those aged 16–21 to 7.1 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively, among the oldest age group

Majority of regional respondents (65 percent) view solar energy as an energy source with the greatest clean potential.

Hydropower ranks second at 33 percent, followed by bioenergy at 27.4 percent and wind energy at 25.8 percent.

Compared with 2024, solar continues to retain first and hydropower second place. Bioenergy, previously labelled “biofuels”, has risen from seventh place, at 14.1 percent, to third (27.4 percent), while wind energy fell from third to fourth place (25.8 percent).

Solar is the leading choice in nine countries: Brunei (48.7 percent), Cambodia (56.7 percent), Indonesia (61.3 percent), Malaysia (75.7 percent), the Philippines (77.1 percent), Singapore (74.9 percent), Thailand (76.9 percent), Vietnam (71.2 percent), and Timor-Leste (66 percent).

Hydropower is Laos’s (55.6 percent) and Myanmar’s (63.8 percent) top choice.

The increase in support for bioenergy should be interpreted cautiously. The broader term used in the 2026 survey explicitly encompasses renewable energy derived from organic materials, including crops, wood, and organic waste.

As a result, direct comparison with the narrower 2024 “biofuels” category is imperfect. This increase may also reflect heightened energy-security concerns, including energy supply disruptions linked to the Strait of Hormuz crisis, renewing regional interest in securing domestic, near term fuel alternatives.

At the country level, higher support for bioenergy in Malaysia (34.7 percent), Indonesia (34.3 percent), Thailand (33.2 percent), and Cambodia (31.4 percent) may reflect interest in agricultural residues, biomass, and waste-to-energy plants.

Wind energy continues to be viewed more positively by countries that possess this resource including Vietnam (47.1 percent) and Timor-Leste (37.3 percent). It is incidentally TimorLeste’s second choice.

Green hydrogen has fallen from fourth place in 2024 (16.5 percent) to fifth place in 2026 (13.8 percent).

Geothermal energy remains at sixth place increasing modestly from 11 percent in 2024 to 12.4 percent.

Interest in nuclear energy gained marginally from 10.8 percent to 11.8 percent with Singapore registering a higher than regional average interest at 31.4 percent, an increase of 11.1 percent from 2024.

Tidal energy continues to place last albeit with an increase from 8.1 percent in 2024 to 10.7 percent this year.

The survey also showed that carbon taxation is recognized as a potential policy instrument to support decarbonization.

Across the region, 62 percent of respondents support the introduction of a national carbon tax, compared with 19.6 percent who oppose it.

Support is particularly strong in Vietnam (83 percent), Indonesia (72.8 percent), and Thailand (68.3 percent).

Singapore remains the region’s most trusted potential climate leader, with confidence dipping slightly to 39.9 percent in 2026 (from 42.9 percent in 2024) even as Singapore respondents’ own confidence in their country rose to 77.3 percent, likely buoyed by its Year of Climate Adaptation designation and S$5 million ($3.91 million) adaptation package committed by its government.

Indonesia holds a distant second at 11.1 percent, while Vietnam has overtaken Thailand for third place at 9.1 percent, driven by rising domestic confidence (up to 49.5 percent) in their own government’s follow-through on their 2050 net-zero pledge.

Overall, unemployment and economic recession (55.3 percent) and climate change/extreme weather (53.6 percent) rank as Southeast Asia’s top two public concerns, separated by just 1.7 points, with domestic
political instability (46 percent) close behind.

Climate concerns top the list in the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia—consistent with the Philippines’ and Vietnam’s high exposure to disaster risk—while economic concerns dominate in Indonesia, Brunei, Timor-Leste, Thailand and Cambodia.

Regional respondents identify insufficient financial resources (15.8 percent) as the biggest obstacle to decarbonization, followed closely by the lack of research and development (R&D), technology and expertise (14.8 percent) and insufficient alternative energy resources (14.4 percent).

Notably, energy insecurity caused by geopolitical events (e.g. war in Ukraine, US-China rivalry) has surged to 13.4 percent — more than double its 2024 level (5.3 percent) — despite remaining below the top-tier capacity constraints.

This sharp increase signals growing awareness across the region that external geopolitical dynamics are increasingly entangled with domestic energy transition pathways, particularly in Singapore (20.3 percent) and Indonesia (17.3 percent).

At the country level, Brunei (25.8 percent) and Singapore (25.1 percent) stand out for citing insufficient alternative energy resources as the most significant impediment, reflecting the structural constraints faced by smaller, fossil-fuel-dependent or land scarce economies.

Cambodia (22.1 percent) and Vietnam (22 percent) continue to flag R&D and technological limitations as their primary bottleneck.

The 2026 survey gathered the views of 3,706 respondents from eleven ASEAN member states. It is the first time that this survey has included respondents from Timor-Leste, ASEAN’s newest member.

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