Asian leaders emphasized that economic growth can be achieved through fair and equitable expectations between developed and developing countries, all while keeping emissions in check.
At Coaltrans Asia 2024 in Bali, Indonesia, Aboitiz Power Corp. and other leaders discussed carbon reduction efforts across various nations.
In a statement, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Maritime and Investment Affairs, said that countries with greater capacity should accelerate their carbon reduction initiatives while developing nations must strive for growth while gradually reducing their emissions.
“Developed nations have been the biggest emitters and need to provide real support for the energy transition in the Global South,” he added.
The Indonesian leader elaborated that, despite ongoing clean energy transitions and decarbonization programs, they and their neighboring countries still view coal as a crucial baseload source for their energy grids.
“Some developed countries that have decarbonized are revisiting their energy mix,” he said.
Coal as a baseload energy source would help fill in the gaps of renewable energy (RE) which is often considered intermittent.
“Even in Germany, coal-fired power plants still play key roles in balancing the electricity output of variable renewable energy such as wind and solar,” Padjaitan said.
Aside from this, improving transmission and power infrastructure may be challenged financially due to the lack of grants.
According to AboitizPower, there are opportunities to shift to cleaner energy by fuel switching, ammonia co-firing, carbon capture and retire the coal-fired power plants.
“The Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) GDP will continue to grow with a compound annual growth rate of 4.6 percent between 2020 and 2050. At the same time, the Asia Pacific Energy Research Centre projects that, in almost all scenarios, ASEAN’s coal consumption is expected to keep increasing,” AboitizPower stated.
Phung Quoc Huy, the APERC senior researcher, said that transitioning to RE in ASEAN requires a lot of expenses, however there is a gap between the needed funds and the goals set in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC).
“We need around $263 billion of funding to transition but we have a funding gap of $189 billion,” he said.
Besides the funding problem, low-income countries are affected due to the rising costs of electricity.
“The transition should focus on a gradual coal phase-down, development of alternative energy sources, and significant investments in grid infrastructure and clean technologies,” Huy explained.
Meanwhile, Ronaldo Ramos, AboitizPower chief operating officer hoped for an abundant clean energy in the near future.
“The cost of solar panels and battery storage technologies going down are encouraging… But we must be mindful of the present realities of the Philippines,” he said.
“We need reliable and reasonably-priced baseload power to address the inherent intermittency of RE and the geographical challenges of injecting these intermittent capacities to our present grid,” Ramos added.
The Philippine Energy Plan (PEP) is aiming for a 50-50 mix of RE and non-renewable energy sources by 2040 but would require an investment worth $550 billion or around P30 trillion.