Commentary: Why the shift to renewable energy in Southeast Asia is patchy
Advertizing
Commentary
Commentary: Why the shift to renewable free energy in Southeast Asia is patchy
Most of Southeast Asia's growth in renewable energy has been concentrated in Vietnam and Thailand. NUS' Philip Andrews-Speed explains why.
03 Oct 2022 06:01AM (Updated: 03 October 2022 06:01AM)
SINGAPORE: Southeast Asia is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to global climate change.
As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found in its latest study, Southeast Asia faces ascent sea levels, rut waves, violent storms and reduced river flows due to reservoir construction and water extraction.
Yet, the urgency displayed by national governments, both individually and collectively through the Asean (Association of southeast asian nations), lies in stark dissimilarity to this emerging threat.
National plans to constrain the rise of carbon emissions from energy use lack ambition, and in some cases are not even treated as cocky-bounden.
The latest Asean Energy Outlook, produced past the Association of southeast asian nations Heart for Energy in November 2020, projects that energy consumption in the region may double between now and 2040. This could involve a doubling of fossil fuel utilize unless radical action is taken.
But this week however, Malaysia'due south prime number minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced plans for the state to "become a carbon neutral state by 2050 at the earliest."
Whilst the path to energy decarbonisation involves many different technologies, renewable energy has become one of the most important in contempo years as costs accept declined over the concluding decade – by 80 per cent for large-scale solar photovoltaic installations and 40 per cent for onshore wind farms.
UNFULFILLED POTENTIAL OF RENEWABLES
Nevertheless, many Southeast Asian countries have been dull to install new renewable energy chapters and are heavily reliant on fossil fuels.
Coal and natural gas supply about 75 per cent of the region's electricity. Hydroelectricity accounts for another twenty per cent and other forms of renewable energy provide just five per cent.
Since 2011, the installed capacity of hydroelectricity has risen by 70 per cent, mainly in the Mekong River Bowl. However, future growth may be limited by factors such as the need to displace communities, the destruction of fisheries in the Mekong Delta and changing conditions patterns.
In contrast, other forms of renewable energy accept neat potential. Solar and wind energy are the most mature of these technologies. However, despite their sharp decline, costs remain higher in Southeast Asia than in many other regions due to constraints on projection development, weak supply bondage and project risks.
Geothermal energy technologies are mature, but costs vary greatly with location, even in areas of loftier potential such as Indonesia and the Philippines.
Bioenergy is some other promising engineering, given the ample supply of sustainable biomass such every bit crop residues in Southeast Asia. Thailand is the regional leader in biomass for electricity generation, whilst Republic of indonesia leads the product of liquid biofuels.
All these forms of energy tin provide off-grid solutions to islands and other remote communities.
Given the availability of these renewable free energy resources across Southeast Asia, the installed chapters of non-hydro renewable electricity generation in the region has risen nearly v-fold since 2011.
Yet, more than 50 per cent of this growth has been in Vietnam, mainly in solar, and another 25 per cent in Thailand, in solar and bioenergy, due to their respective governments' concerted efforts at developing renewable energy. The other eight Member States have washed relatively trivial.
VARIABILITY OF RENEWABLE RESOURCES Beyond Association of southeast asian nations
To understand why, we need to look first at the variation of availability of renewable energy resources across the region.
How far tin alternatives similar solar, wind and biothermal go? CNA'south Jaime Ho speaks to Francesco La Camera, Director-General of the International Renewable Free energy Agency (IRENA):
Whilst Southeast Asia has a relatively hot climate for much or all of the year, the intensity of solar radiation does not lucifer that of the deserts of the Middle East, Due north Africa or western China.
In general, the solar energy potential of the region is similar to parts of southern Europe, such as Italia and southern France, but much better than in Germany, a country with a lot of installed solar power.
Solar accounts for about 60 per cent of Southeast Asia's installed capacity of not-hydro renewable electricity, just the areas that receive the strongest solar intensity are concentrated in the Mekong region: Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, and southern Vietnam.
Until it was recently overtaken past Vietnam, Thailand hosted the largest installed chapters of solar power in the region.
By the stop of 2020, Vietnam had sixteen,000 MW of installed solar capacity, dwarfing that of Thailand at 3,000 MW. But solar free energy only makes upward a fraction of these countries' free energy mix: Solar photovoltaics contributed only four per cent of electricity generation in Vietnam and ii.six per cent in Thailand.
Tropical and equatorial regions across the world tend to have relatively depression potential for wind energy on state.
As a upshot, wind energy provides relatively fiddling electricity in Southeast Asia. Nigh of this is in Thailand and, to a lesser extent, in Vietnam and the Philippines.
However, the future lies offshore. Coastal areas of the Southward China Ocean, areas off Vietnam, the Philippines and eastern Malaysia, have potential equivalent to that in parts of northern People's republic of china, where wind is a major source of free energy.
The potential for geothermal energy is greatest where in that location are volcanoes, in the Philippines and Indonesia. Bioenergy is playing a significant function in electricity generation, especially in Thailand, just also in Republic of indonesia and Malaysia.
Association of southeast asian nations LAGGING Backside ON INVESTMENT INTO RENEWABLES
While most Southeast Asian countries take the potential to develop one or more sources of non-hydro renewable energy, besides Vietnam and Thailand, many accept failed to put in place stable policies to encourage investment by individual actors.
Where such policies are in place, detailed regulations and rules are absent-minded or weakly implemented.
Neither have governments obliged their land-endemic power companies to invest in renewable free energy capacity. Instead, they take continued to subsidise the construction of power generating capacity based on fossil fuels.
This preference arises from the longstanding part of fossil fuels in the economic system and the resultant powerful industrial involvement groups.
Indonesia, for case, is rich in coal, oil and gas. Companies agile in these industries are deeply invested, financially and politically, in mining, burning and exporting these resources.
Moreover, coal is still seen equally beingness cheaper than renewable free energy, despite the abrupt price declines of the latter. Edifice a political consensus to promote renewable energy faces strong opposition.
In dissimilarity, the evolution of renewable free energy is an attractive option for countries that lack abundant fossil fuel resource, such equally Thailand and Vietnam.
Unless investment in renewable energy is accelerated, individual Association of southeast asian nations Member States may fail to meet their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions to constrain rising carbon emissions.
In addition, Association of southeast asian nations as a grouping will fail to accomplish its short-term target of having renewable free energy, including hydroelectricity, business relationship for 23 per cent of primary free energy consumption past 2025.
THE COSTS OF INACTION
The principal economic adventure of delaying investment in renewable free energy is that the ongoing investments in fossil fuel generating capacity volition become "stranded" and the investment capital wasted as the toll of renewable energy continues to decline.
The environmental cost of inaction is two-fold. First, the region'due south contribution to greenhouse gas emissions will go on to rise. Second, local air pollution from fossil fuel combustion volition intensify.
Though disquisitional to the low-carbon transition, enhanced investment in renewable free energy by itself will not be sufficient. Robust and flexible filigree systems backed by energy storage are needed to balance intermittent renewable energy sources such every bit solar and current of air.
A regional power transmission grid with a supporting trading system could movement clean energy from areas of surplus, such as Laos, to areas of deficit, such equally Malaysia and Singapore. In a few years, solar power from Australia may add to supplies in Southeast Asia.
In the longer-term, carbon capture and nuclear ability may too start to make a significant contribution to the region's decarbonisation. The final, and arguably, most potent tool is energy efficiency and conservation.
Philip Andrews-Speed is Senior Principal Fellow at the Energy Studies Establish, National University of Singapore.
pendletonhises1939.blogspot.com
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/asean-clean-energy-indonesia-thailand-vietnam-solar-wind-coal-fossil-fuel-293761
Post a Comment for "Commentary: Why the shift to renewable energy in Southeast Asia is patchy"