ASEAN countries have laid an aspirational five-year sustainability plan to improve the renewable energy (RE) capacity in the power mix to 35% to achieve the target of 23% of RE in the total primary energy supply by 2025. The renewables (including hydro) under this vision can witness a new capacity build of approximately 35-40GW by 2025. This plan will help the countries to reduce their pollution level and reach closer to their sustainable and de-carbonization target, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, represent a share of about 84% of the total installed RE capacity among the ASEAN countries. Vietnam leads the sustainability change with 34% share, followed by Thailand (17%), Indonesia (13%), Malaysia (10%) and the Philippines (10%). By the end of 2019, the share of RE sources (including hydro) was 29% with respect to the total RE cumulative installed capacity in the ASEAN region.

Ankit Mathur, Practice Head of Power at GlobalData, says: “Countries like Vietnam, the Phillippines and Indonesia are expected to lead the charge of RE installations in the region during 2020-2025. Vietnam is anticipated to lead the pack with over 13GW of the installations in the region. Solar PV and hydropower are expected to support the majority of this renewable-led transition with around 70% share of the new RE capacity build between 2020-2025. Following the above is wind with around 17% share and biopower with around 11%.”

The implementation of the renewables, mainly solar PV and wind, has caught the interest of several countries, subsequent to the low cost of installation bringing down the grid parity at a competitive level with other low cost power generation technologies.

Mathur concludes: “Besides the steps taken towards decarbonization of the power sector, the cooperation group has also advocated the expansion of the ASEAN power grid, Trans-ASEAN gas pipeline network, developing clean coal technology, energy efficiency and conservation to complement the overall efforts being directed towards achieving the sustainable energy mix, meeting sustainable development goals and supporting the climate change efforts under the Paris Agreement.”