Southeast Asia Energy Transition Dialogue: Governance and the role of markets

Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam represent three of the largest power systems in ASEAN. Together they provide electricity services to 480 million people with 166 GW of installed capacity, constituting 58% of the total ASEAN installed capacity. Conspicuous in these three power systems, is a significantly high combined coal capacity of 68 GW.

Collectively ASEAN, including Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam, have committed to a target of 23% of primary energy coming from renewables (RE) by 2025. All ASEAN countries, with the exception of the Philippines, have also announced net zero targets by 2050 or 2060.

Achieving these targets will take an unprecedented scaling up of RE investment. Between 2016 – 2021, ASEAN countries collectively invested less than USD 8 billion annually in renewables.

- For RE to reach 23% of primary energy, the annual investment would need to triple to USD27 billion.
- For Southeast Asia to achieve its Paris Agreement commitments, the annual investment would need to increase 5-12 times from current levels.

Attracting this scale of investment to RE is a major challenge for ASEAN power systems which have evolved to exploit historically abundant, but unsustainable, generation technologies like coal, gas and large
hydropower. In addition, Governments alone cannot meet this scale of investment pointing to an urgent need to scale, direct and sustain private sector investment into RE. This requires a transformation in governance of
the power systems and the electricity markets these systems support.

The 2023 Energy Transition Dialogue will take stock of market and regulatory conditions in Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam, and explore how governance reform and markets can attract private finance and
accelerate energy transition in these countries and ASEAN. The dialogue will bring together high-level speakers from ASEAN, Australia and Europe to share regulatory and market reform experiences and provide
an open forum for discussion.