Accelerating a Just Energy Transition: Southeast Asia Sustainable Power Planning

As part of the Clean Energy Ministerial’s effort to engage with Emerging and Developing Economies, the CEM Secretariat, in collaboration with the Energy Commission of Malaysia and the Ministry for Energy Transformation and Water Transition of Malaysia, with support of the Asian Clean Energy Center (ACE) hosted a workshop on Accelerating A Just Energy Transition: Southeast Asia Sustainable Power Planning on June 4 in Penang, Malaysia. This workshop was held during the week of ASEAN Renewable Energy Sub-Sector Network (RE-SSN) Annual Meeting, thus offering a platform for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and fostering partnerships to advance sustainable energy solutions in Southeast Asia.

Within a framework of understanding regional goals and ambitions, the depth of multilateral collaboration of the Clean Energy Ministerial, and the opportunities of partnerships and coordination regionally in Southeast Asia, the workshop articulated key insights to address growing demand, meeting country level and regional clean energy goals, and unlocking flexibility of the power systems to assure reliability. Through the day, interactive dialogues and panel discussions were designed to address opportunities, challenges, lessons and best practices for Southeast Asia on key thematic priorities, in particular:

• impacting power systems’ regulation and enhanced capacity of regulators,
• enhancing power system flexibility through digitization and energy storage,
• addressing growing demands from new applications such as electric mobility, cooling, data centres and AI, with clean and alternative energy supplies; and
• ensuring Just Energy transitions with a systematic focus on critical minerals, supply chains, as well as workforce and skills development.

Over 150 regional and national stakeholders from governments, international organizations, industry, and academia met to share lessons learned, explore innovative solutions, and foster collaboration for clean power system transformation in Southeast Asia.

The workshop identified a number of actionable recommendations that advance the region’s commitment to sustainability, inclusivity, and energy resiliency, making ASEAN a global model for collaborative and forward-thinking energy planning and regulatory frameworks.

Additionally, experts discussed the necessary components of supply chains, workforce, transmission expansion, regional coordination and integration, and national priorities. Highlights were offered from key experts and collaborating institutions from the CEM Secretariat, ERAD, ISGAN, 21st Century Power Partnership, and the Empowering People Initiative.

Increasing low cost, reliable, secure, and abundant electricity across the region was recognized as a valuable necessity. The variety of resources available across the region, combined with strategies for enabling flexibility, cross border trade, embracing best practices for planning, building, and operating power systems was shared. The Clean Energy Ministerial Action Plans, and Agenda for Action offered tangible and practical examples for countries to follow, and engage with the CEM community, as well as learn from and share key insights and lessons learned.

A brief summary of the workshop will be made available shortly on this page, highlighting key takeaways from each session. The agenda and concept of the workshop is available for download below.

This workshop was co-hosted by:

With thematic support from: