Asia needs to develop and deploy clean energy technology in order to sustain its recent economic gains.
Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that 17 billion tons of carbon dioxide must be reduced to rein in global warming, and ADB’s developing member countries can cut half of that through the deployment of low carbon technologies.
“With the threat to Asia’s development gains, especially to the people so recently lifted out of poverty, governments must act on this potential,” Kuroda said at Wednesday’s opening of the Asia Clean Energy Forum (ACEF) held here.
The region is home to some of the world’s fastest growing economies, but such development came at a cost. Rising demand for electricity and vehicles pushed up consumption of fossil fuel and spiked greenhouse gas emission.
The ADB said the share of the Asian energy sector in global carbon emissions rose to 30 percent, from a mere eight percent in 1980. And unless the region will develop and use more low carbon technologies, the Manila-based lender estimates that Asia’s contribution may increase to 43 percent by 2030.
The growing concern over climate change — and how it will hurt the region’s environment, human health and economy — has forced economic planners, advocates and business leaders in Asia to search for a stable energy source that can moderate the carbon emissions.
Analysts said Asia is leading the move towards development and usage of low carbon technologies including the harnessing of wind and solar energy.
“An energy revolution is happening, and wind power is leading the way,” said Steve Sawyer, secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), a Belgium-based global wind industry trade association.
Sawyer said that Asia is now the world’s fastest growing market for wind energy.
According to data supplied by GWEC, China alone has a cumulative wind power capacity of over 12 GW, making China the fourth largest wind market in the world.
China is also among the world’s major manufacturers of wind turbines. Another major investor in wind energy is India, which now has roughly 10 GW wind power capacity.
The GWEC said adequate resources and friendly government policies (such as the granting of fiscal incentives and implementation of national renewable energy policy) supported the growth of wind energy in these two countries. Other Asian countries have likewise embarked on renewable energy. The Philippines has a national policy on renewable energy and its developing wind and solar power. ADB financed upgrading of hydropower dams and solar street lamps in Nepal. Indonesia is tapping its huge geothermal potential.
Kuroda said that ADB has allocated 2 billion U.S. dollars a year for climate change. But this is a “drop in the bucket” compared to the public and private investments needed by countries in the Asia Pacific region.
The International Energy Agency estimates that from 2006 to 2030, the region needs 9 trillion U.S. dollars to develop clean energy technologies.
Given the huge investment needed, analysts said that the private sector should step in.
But GWEC’s Sawyer said private sector’s investments can only come in if the government will do its part through pricing support, giving clean energy investors priority access to grid and having a clear and transparent regulation process.
“The government should not be in the business of building and running power plants because it’s inefficient,” Sawyer said.
For his part, Kuroda said there are many technologies with the potential to help Asia move towards a low carbon economy.
“But due to many barriers, from the higher price to intellectual property concerns, these technologies are not being deployed in scale. Bringing down these barriers is our key challenge. But even then, funding will be needed to deploy these technologies,” Kuroda said.
Kuroda said that one of the major barrier to the effective transfer of technology is the lack of intellectual property mechanisms to transfer the ability to produce clean energy technologies. He said that to resolve this, the ADB is preparing to create a market place or exchange for clean energy technologies.
One such ADB-led project is the Solar Energy Initiative launched last April. This initiative aims to raise financing for development of 3,000 megawatts of solar power.
