Southeast Asia, or its regional grouping ASEAN, represents 8.5% of the world population and a combined GDP of $3.2 trillion, the fifth-largest economy in the world. As an area of rapid economic growth, Southeast Asia is also one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to climate change impacts. Despite the political consensus reached at the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rise to well below two degrees, significant challenges of transitioning away from fossil fuels remain and require attention from various stakeholders.
This themed issue of Fulbright Review of Economics and Policy collates four research papers on energy policy and, more broadly, climate action in this important but under-studied region. They together cover four of the most crucial areas in this field: governance, financing, capacity building and modelling. Energy Transition Governance in the ASEAN: Current Status and Future Prospects adopts a constructive lens to study how the various forces of norm entrepreneurship work for or against energy transition in ASEAN States. Financial Mechanisms for Energy Transitions: A Review Article evaluates financial mechanisms to financing energy transitions in each stage of the process. Bridging the Implementation Gap for Climate Mitigation in ASEAN: A Comprehensive Capacity-Building Framework, based on interviews and survey, systematically examines capacity building needs in each ASEAN country and collectively as a region. Optimising Malaysia’s Power Mix for a Sustainable Future: A Multi-Scenario Modelling Approach employs advanced modelling to analyse three policy scenarios (existing, optimised existing and more ambitious policy) in Malaysia’s power sector.
Findings from the research papers confirm and offer important new insights into the opportunities and challenges ASEAN is facing in climate change.
Despite the vulnerability and climate ambition of the region, governance and policy-making is a landscape complex. In the case of Malaysia, for example, although natural gas expansion underpins the country’s decarbonisation strategy, solar and storage offer a cleaner and potentially cost-effective alternative, as identified by the modelling in Optimising Malaysia’s Power Mix for a Sustainable Future: A Multi-Scenario Modelling Approach. Another important source to be tapped is the country’s abundant bioenergy resources, which potentially can contribute to rural development. As another example of this complicatedness, Energy Transition Governance in the ASEAN: Current Status and Future Prospects reveals that ASEAN governments demonstrate both norm entrepreneurial and anti-entrepreneurial characteristics, or as the new conceptions introduced by the author, “conductive” (that drive Energy Transition) and “resistive” (that slow it down) practices.
Infrastructure and capacity building have been constantly highlighted as key to the success in the region. For instance, Optimising Malaysia’s Power Mix for a Sustainable Future: A Multi-Scenario Modelling Approach calculates that realising the full potential of solar and storage in Malaysia requires significant grid upgrades. Bridging the Implementation Gap for Climate Mitigation in ASEAN: A Comprehensive Capacity-Building Framework, on the other hand, underscores the importance of partnerships, with extant opportunities for both intra-connection (cooperation between ASEAN member states) and interconnection (cooperation between ASEAN member states and other state and non-state actors).
This themed issue would stand out with a well-kept balance between a collective view of ASEAN as a community and an individualistic lens at all the states. Bridging the Implementation Gap for Climate Mitigation in ASEAN: A Comprehensive Capacity-Building Framework, as an example, identifies the priority areas for capacity building for each ASEAN country, as well as the region as a whole. These research papers also tend to fill the gap of current literature with a special focus on the non-technical aspect of climate policy, e.g. philosophical underpinnings, psychological maturity and norm making. They would not only make important contributions to inform future policy making in ASEAN countries, but also have good chances of acquiring wider applicability beyond the region.
Finally, financing is one of the most crucial factors to ensure a progressive transition. Financial Mechanisms for Energy Transitions: A Review Article identifies six stages of energy transition, ranging from awareness and intuition to a sustainable future. By applying various financial mechanisms – public financing, private financing, market-based mechanisms, innovative financing and institutional support – to each stage of the transition, the paper highlights key challenges in the energy transition process and outlines promising areas for future research.
