Energy Explored

Notably in Southeast Asia, there's a growing emphasis on renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, driven by both environmental concerns and the region's abundant natural resources. However, key challenges lie ahead for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' (ASEAN) journey to net zero over the next five years. Infrastructure development, regulatory frameworks, and investment constraints pose significant hurdles. Managing director of Markland Infrastructure Asia, Allard Nooy, joins Reed Smith's Matthew Gorman and Joyce Fong, to share their insights and vision for the future of ASEAN's energy landscape by 2030. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Hello, everyone and welcome to Energy Explored. This podcast covers the challenges of achieving a carbon neutral global economy, cutting emissions of gasses and pollutants and setting up new energy systems. Join Reed Smith lawyers and guest speakers as they shed light on the most important trends in emissions control and new fuels. Tune in as we follow the ever evolving journey through the transition of energy.  Joyce: Hello and thank you for joining us on this podcast. I'm delighted to be chatting with Allard Nooy and Matthew Gorman today about the energy transition in Southeast Asia. For the benefit of our listeners Allard is a senior advisor at RPS. He has extensive experience in strategic planning, directing growth, developing financing and implementing major renewable energy and infrastructure projects in Asia-Pacific. Matthew is a partner, Reed Smith. He is a seasoned corporate finance lawyer with extensive experience of cross-border transactions in Europe and Asia. His experience spans a range of industry sectors, including energy and natural resources with a focus on infrastructure and renewables. Allard and Matthew, from your long experience in Southeast Asia, are there any uniquely Asian or Asian energy trends which you have observed?  Allard: Well, first and foremost, energy demand in ASEAN is the total final energy consumption or TFEC abbreviated, we should recognize that projection is to reach 473 million tons of oil equivalent or MTOE and that's by 2025 and 1.2 million by 2050. So fossil fuels are projected to continue to dominate the regional energy demand with oil still making up the largest share of TFE through 2050. Industry and transportation shares are projected to remain the largest energy consuming sectors. Their shares in TFEC will grow by 3.8% and 3.6% respectively. Cooking and cooling appliances will remain the largest energy consumption in the residential space making up about 82% of the sector's demand by 2050. Secondly, on the energy demand side of the house, this is expected to grow fourth-fold from 650 million TOEC in 2020 to about 2.6 million by 2050. Oil, natural gas and coal are forecasted to continue to dominate an ASEAN’s energy supply accounting for about 88% of the total primary energy supply in 2050 leaving renewables at just 12%. Now with out significant discoveries or addition to existing production infrastructure and with the expected rate of utilization of fossil fuels ASEAN is projected to become a net importer of natural gas by the mid of this century and of coal by 2040.  Matthew: You know from a from a trend perspective and from an ASEAN perspective, I think one of the things that people need to understand is that, you know, one of the challenges across pretty much most of ASEAN is that demand for energy is still growing significantly. I mean, even even in, you know, a number of places across the region, you know, having a reliable or even any electricity supply is still a challenge. Uh and therefore, you know what ASEAN or a lot of large parts of ASEAN are trying to, to achieve and to against the context of the of net zero targets is actually, you know, just coping with that, you know, huge demand that's still, you know, happening as a result of many of these, you know, countries being on a on a development, you