Winds of Change – East Asia’s Sustainable Energy Future

The Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore (SEAS) organised a lunchtime seminar at Thomson Reuters yesterday, where The World Bank presented its flagship study report, Winds of Change – East Asia’s Sustainable Energy Future. Dr Wang Xiaodong, Senior Energy Specialist, East Asia & Pacific (EAP) region of the World Bank, gave a summary of the report findings, which incorporates the lessons learned from the World Bank in advocating policies and programs for clean energy investments in East Asia and Pacific countries.

The study covers six countries – China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, and has the following key messages:

… large-scale deployment of energy efficiency and low-carbon technologies can simultaneously stabilize East Asia’s CO2 emissions by 2025 and significantly improve the local environment and enhance energy security, without compromising economic growth.

… accelerating the speed and scaling up the efforts are needed to get onto a sustainable energy path. The window of opportunity is closing fast, because delaying action would lock the region into a long-lasting high-carbon infrastructure.

This shift to a clean energy revolution requires major domestic policy and institutional reforms. Governments can adopt climate smart domestic policies now to deploy existing low-carbon technologies while a global climate deal is negotiated … To fully realize the huge energy efficiency potentials in the region requires the removal of fossil-fuel subsidies and incorporation of environmental externalities into energy pricing as well as a concerted strategy to tackle market failures and barriers with effective regulations, financial incentives, institutional reforms, and financing mechanisms.

Developed countries need to transfer substantial financing and low-carbon technologies. To achieve this sustainable energy path, a major hurdle is to mobilize financing for the net additional investment of $80 billion per year over the next two decades. It is estimated that approximately $25 billion per year would be required as concessional financing to cover the incremental costs and risks of energy efficiency and renewable energy. In addition, substantial grants are also needed to build capacity of local stakeholders. The technical and policy means exist for such transformations, but only strong political will and unprecedented international cooperation will make them happen.

Source and image credit: Winds of Change – East Asia’s Sustainable Energy Future by The World Bank