Fossil fuels have been central to Southeast Asia’s post-colonial nation-building and a key driver of global geopolitics in the last two centuries. The objective of contemporary energy diplomacy in the region is to secure fossil fuel supplies to meet national security goals. A new form of energy diplomacy is needed to drive the development of the Asean Power Grid (APG), utilise the region’s critical mineral resources, and address the compounding geopolitics of energy transition. Renewable energy diplomacy is thus the key catalyst for meeting national-level net-zero targets and limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
One study defines renewable energy diplomacy as “the use of foreign policy to facilitate the development and utilisation of cleaner energy sources and to enhance energy efficiency”. Under this conceptualisation, energy diplomacy has two aims: to facilitate multilateral and bilateral cooperation on clean energy and to counter the geopolitics of energy transition.
There is growing evidence of the manifestation of renewable energy diplomacy as it relates to bilateral and multilateral engagement in accelerating transition. For example, Singapore is engaging with at least five regional countries to import six gigawatts of low-carbon electricity by 2035. Vietnam plans to cooperate with multiple companies in Europe and other regions to increase the contribution of wind and solar to over 61 per cent of installed capacity by 2050, while multiple regional countries have cultivated a close partnership with China to develop their renewable energy resources.
These examples show that Southeast Asian countries are beginning to align energy transition with the practice of diplomacy more closely. However, the region has yet to develop a collective response to the other priority of renewable energy diplomacy, which is to address the geopolitics of energy transition. This is manifested in two ways: first, the lack of trust and resource nationalism within the region; second, the growing competition between the US and China over critical minerals and green technology.
These challenges can be responded to in two ways.
First, Asean needs to facilitate consensus among political actors to address impediments to energy transition at the regional level. One key pathway towards addressing trust deficits, funding gaps and resource nationalism is the development of a regional institution with legislative powers that can enforce contracts, resolve disputes, administer payments and facilitate the exchange of accurate data. This is crucial for accelerating the APG.
The main challenge to developing such an institution is political, not technocratic, as individual countries in Southeast Asia are unwilling to transfer sovereignty over their energy systems to a regional authority. Examples from Europe and Africa show that a regional institution underpinned by legislative mandates can play a key role in driving energy transition and reducing trust deficits. Asean must prioritise regional discussion with a step-by-step and multi-stakeholder approach to developing an energy institution.
Second, Asean must address the negative impacts of the US-China rivalry on the region’s energy transition. One of the key aspects to focus on is critical minerals, which are essential inputs to produce green technologies such as solar panels and wind turbines. Southeast Asia has substantial deposits of critical minerals such as copper, nickel, rare earths and bauxite. China’s domination of upstream and downstream parts of the supply chains of these essential minerals is perceived as a threat to national security by the US and its allies, which has prompted the development of the Mineral Security Partnership (MSP), an attempt by the West to develop an alternative supply chain of critical minerals that excludes China and Russia.
The US has recently asked Indonesia, the world’s largest nickel producer, to join the MSP. Meanwhile, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand have become partner countries of BRICS, which analysts say can form a critical mineral coalition to counter the MSP, leading to further stratification of global and Southeast Asian energy transition efforts. To address these geopolitical pressures, Asean can emphasise its centrality in engaging with external powers on critical minerals by implementing the collective governance mechanisms recommended in the Asean Plus Three Minerals Cooperation Work Plan.
Renewable energy diplomacy is vital in addressing internal and external challenges to the energy transition in Southeast Asia. Yet, a broader appreciation of the geopolitics of energy transition within Asean is sorely missing. Renewable energy is mentioned in the Economic Community Blueprint and the Socio-Cultural Blueprint for 2025 but is missing in the Political-Security Community Blueprint. Given that energy in general and transition, in particular, is driven by geopolitics, the 2045 iteration of the Asean Political-Security Community Blueprint should recognise the need for a collective diplomatic response to the geopolitics of energy transition and highlight some avenues towards confidence building on energy issues between regional and external actors.
Mirza Sadaqat Huda is Lead Researcher in the Climate Change in Southeast Asia Programme, ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute.
This article was first published in Fulcrum, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute’s blogsite.
