The Role of Renewable Energy in Resolving Energy Insecurity in Asia

Abstract

Energy security implies the availability, affordability, applicability, plausibility and acceptability of countries’ energy supply. Implying the sustainability of countries’ energy supplies, energy insecurity is widespread across Asia. Southeast Asia (SEA) serves as an example for Asia’s energy insecurity. Notwithstanding efforts to expand its share of renewable energy (renewables), fossil energy dominates the regional energy mix. Various factors have created obstacles for the expansion of renewables in SEA, prolonging this environmentally unsustainable situation. Their addressing demands a comprehensive approach to ensure the energy requirements of the regional countries and also their social and economic development in determining their choice of energy. Singapore and the Philippines serve as good examples of energy insecurity in SEA, having fossil energy-dominated energy mixes. Expanding the share of renewables in their energy mixes demands different plans linked to their sustainable development, which is true for the rest of SEA. However, achieving this objective demands different routes, given their differences in terms of the availability, affordability, applicability, plausibility and acceptability of energy, particularly those of environmentally clean renewables. It necessitates sustainable energy to make such renewables a necessity whose local production could serve as an engine for economic development while simultaneously ending their energy insecurity.