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Major ASEAN Countries,Actively Introduce Eco-friendlyRenewable Energy Policie
Advisor, ASEAN-India Center, Korean National Diplomatic Academy, Former Ambassador to the Philippines Han Dong-man

First, Indonesia has set a national energy policy goalof increasing the utilization ratio of renewable energyto 23% in 2025 and 31% in 2050 to maximize the useof renewable energy. To this end, the Indonesiangovernment amended the law on the use of renewableenergy sources in June 2020 and announced plansto build hydropower and geothermal power plantsin September of the same year. It has also decidedto invest $20 billion in renewable energy by 2024to power 40% of new power plants in the futureand make better use of resource potential—59% ofgeothermal, 80% of bio, 51% of hydro, 22% of solar,and 46% of wind energy—by 2050.

Malaysia is implementing its NEW 3.0 policy topromote the use of solar power and the disseminationof related facilities. NEW 3.0 is Malaysia’s newelectricity bill calculation policy, which divides thetypes of energy users into civilian, governmentinstitutions, and businesses, and differentiates thegovernment incentives for the introduction of solarfacilities for each entity. Malaysia, in particular, is aregion rich in solar resources. To take advantage ofthis strength, the country announced the long-termSolar PV Roadmap in 2017 and aims to become theworld’s largest photovoltaics producer by 2030.

With a goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissionsby 2050, Vietnam has plans to reduce the share ofcoal and natural gas to 37% and 21% respectivelywhile increasing the share of hydro to 18% andrenewable energy such as solar and wind to 35%. TheVietnam government has been especially active inimplementing feed-in tariffs for solar resulting in 16.6GW of solar generation capacity (a 25 fold increasecompared to 2018 and 10th largest in the world) whichthe government aims to increase to 26 GW by 2030.

The Philippines has laid out the Philippine EnergyEfficiency Roadmap 2014-30, which includes sectorspecific strategies for the transportation, industrial,commercial, and residential sectors. This roadmapaims to provide energy demand and supply prospects,establish sector-specific plans for oil, gas, coal, andrenewable energy, and reduce energy intensitytowards a low-carbon, eco-friendly future. Thepotential geothermal capacity of the Philippines, theworld’s second-largest generator of geothermal power,is about 2,500 MW. In accordance with the energysupply plan for 2012-2030, the country’s Departmentof Energy plans to build 26 geothermal plants over thenext 18 years to increase geothermal production by 62%.