Southeast Asia Sustainable Energy Challenges

Southeast Asian nations are at a critical juncture regarding their shared energy future plus intensely depend on fossil fuels for electricity and transport. In Asia, particularly China and India, top the global sustainable energy generation experiencing an era of economic transformation and energy transition. Nations in Southeast Asia have vast possibilities for renewable energy Asia and its sources. Though, they are yet to accomplish internationally in sustainable energy operationalization owing to several challenges.

Energy investment

Whichever path the expanse takes, providing Southeast Asia’s energy requirements and policy urgencies shall necessitate higher investment levels. The requisite to intensify investment is predominantly acute in the power sector. Nowadays, investment levels prove inadequate to the anticipated requirements inside the Stated Policies Scenario plus are over 50% lower than what could be necessary inside the Sustainable Development Scenario.

Marshaling speculation needs broad involvement from the private sector in the cases of an independent power producer, in addition to the targeted employment of public coffers. Public sources have to date played a crucial part in bankrolling thermal power plant projects plus far-reaching renewables (like geothermal or hydropower) with considerable upfront capital requirements. On the other hand, solar PV and wind and projects have banked on much more on private sponsorship, encouraged by explicit policy enticements.

Key Sustainable Energy challenges in Southeast Asia

At present, competence and experience are absent in several Southeast Asia states, chiefly in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and in assessing the sustainable energy investment risk.

Some of the challenges encountered by sustainable energy project initiators in the Southeast Asian expanse include technical and environmental conditions. A shortage of strategies in place to control the suitable employment of land plus the succeeding ecological impact is a rising concern when big sized sustainable energy projects are run in the area.

Explicit to the Philippines and Indonesia, is the problem of inadequate infrastructure capability that hampers effective, sustainable energy deployment, in reference to electrical energy transmission. This is owed to the fact that both nations are archipelagic naturally, bringing about uneven electricity grids.

Another critical problem whenever it comes to launching plus development of sustainable energy projects is the lack of a supervisory framework. Brunei, for instance, has no detailed strategy structure in position to standardize the growth of sustainable energy but is presently reviewing the likelihood of forming one.

Absence of synchronization amid administration entities and the private segment as is the situation in Lao PDR, which commendably deters the application of the nation’s sustainable energy guidelines and primacies.

Last but not least interference is the problem of intricate bureaucracy. Some nations dominate the transmission, delivery, plus system operation of electrical energy and monopolize the local electricity production marketplace, which constrains the interests of prospective financiers.

Adam Hansen
 

Adam is a part time journalist, entrepreneur, investor and father.