LAST Friday, I attended a forum organized by the Global Renewables Alliance (GRA) and the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) in the aftermath of the 44th Asean Ministers on Energy Meeting (AMEM) and the Asean Energy Business Forum (AEBF) held at the Philippine International Convention Center last week. Due to a number of unavoidable commitments I was not able to attend the AMEM/AEBF myself and had to rely on my vast network of spooks and informants for updates, so the Friday briefing added some valuable context to what I was hearing, plus the all-important joint statement issued by the Asean energy leaders at the conclusion of the AMEM.
As Friday’s forum was organized by renewable energy leaders, there was obviously a clear angle to their focus of what they thought was important in the AMEM/AEBF event, but to be fair, except for only mentioning nuclear energy in passing — it apparently was a much bigger topic in the main meetings — the briefing discussed in detail what seemed to be the priority points during the week. These were, in no particular order, the need to bolster regional resilience against the external shocks to fuel prices, which ideally entails accelerating development of "native" resources (primarily RE, of course) and contingency reserves of critical fuels; the need to accelerate full electrification across the region; pushing harder to advance the energy transition to clean generation sources; and accelerating the development of the Asean Power Grid (APG).
I am really trying not to start the week on a negative note, but in listening to the discussion of Friday — and, if I may be brutally frank about it, the non-answers to a couple of questions I raised to the panel of experts — it is hard not to conclude that despite the Philippines’ hosting of these important meetings, by virtue of its holding the Asean chairmanship this year, this country is out in the cold with respect to the development trajectory of the rest of the regional bloc.
First of all, the topics of electrification and building up regional reserves — presumably of fuels such as coal, natural gas, diesel and oil — were only vaguely treated, both in the briefing and in the joint statement. The energy ministers “welcomed progress” towards these things (and a lot of others), but there is nothing concrete in place. That seems to be a function of how the Asean works in general, where any common framework for anything is only arrived at by voluntary consensus, and is treated as a mere suggestion that may be followed or not, without consequence, according to individual national needs.
In that context, the Asean can agree that the member-states make their individual reserves — or a portion thereof — available to other members, and it seems they are working toward that kind of framework, but on the subject of total electrification, everyone is on their own. It was suggested that working to facilitate the broader development of RE in general and distributed energy resources (rooftop solar and microgrids) in particular would help that, and it probably would, but again, there is little that can be done along those lines in one Asean country that could help advance total electrification in another.
In terms of RE development, the AMEM joint statement reaffirmed the targets of a 30-percent renewable energy share in total primary energy supply and 45-percent renewables share target in installed power capacity by 2030 set out in the Asean Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation (Apaec). This was highlighted during the Friday briefing, but it was also pointed out that the 9th Asean Energy Outlook (AEO) released during the week forecasts less RE deployment during the period up to at least 2030 than it did in last year’s edition.
One of the panelists expressed puzzlement about why this was so, as it is an apparent contradiction; in a period with high and volatile conventional fuel prices, one would think there would be incentive to roll out more RE, as it is cheaper in the long run and insulated from those fuel shocks. “We have to look at the data to understand why this is,” the expert said, at which point I stuck up my hand.
“Why do you think this is?” I asked.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to speculate,” was the reply.
Here’s a tip for people who encounter me at forums: Almost every question I ask is one that I already know the answer to, or at least some of it. It’s a test; is there depth and nuance to the information being shared, or are you just blowing sunshine up everyone’s skirt? In this case, I was trying to suss out whether the Asean-wide RE targets are practical, or merely aspirational numbers for the sake of having numbers.
That is because the 45 percent by 2030 target is, on its face, rather fantastic; according to the AEO, the Asean countries will need to add 31 gigawatts of RE capacity every year between now and 2030 to hit the target. That’s not absolutely impossible under ideal circumstances; but it’s a stretch at best, and under the current, decidedly less-than-ideal circumstances, which have exposed energy security (meaning simply having energy available) as the biggest risk, countries are going to shift their short-term focus to what they know to be reliable. In an atmosphere of uncertainty, making an investment – and a huge amount of investment is needed – to meet an arbitrary longer-term RE target is much less important than taking the most expedient action to keep the lights on right now.
The biggest topic of interest seemed to be the Asean-wide power grid, an initiative that is being heavily supported by big institutions such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and World Bank. Unfortunately, despite the optimistic rhetoric, which was also reflected in the AMEM joint statement’s highlighting progress on the Asean Submarine Power Cable Development Framework, from a practical standpoint the APG initiative is virtually irrelevant as far as the Philippines is concerned, thanks to geography. Out of all the interconnection projects on the menu in the Asean Interconnection Masterplan Study (there are 20 total), only one, a connection between the southern tip of Palawan and the northern tip of Sabah, involves the Philippines, and it is foreseen for some future indefinite date. Even then, making it useful to the Philippines would require connecting Palawan to the rest of the Philippine grid — which it isn’t now — and then connecting the grid on the island of Borneo to the rest of the Asean grid, through additional undersea connections to Java, Sumatra and then Peninsular Malaysia.
My sense listening to all of this is that, in spite of hopeful ambitions and willingness to participate on a regional level, the Philippines is just as out in the cold and on its own in terms of energy development and evolution after the AMEM/AEBF as it was before. Maybe we can learn from what the others are doing, but we still have to do it all ourselves.
ben.kritz@manilatimes.net
Bluesky: @benkritz.bsky.social
Website: www.badmannersgunclub.com
