Fossil fuels have been central to Southeast Asia’s post-colonial nation-building and a key driver of worldwide geopolitics within the final two centuries. The target of up to date vitality diplomacy within the area is to safe fossil gas provides to fulfill nationwide safety objectives. A brand new type of vitality diplomacy is required to drive the event of the Asean Energy Grid (APG), utilise the area’s crucial mineral sources, and handle the compounding geopolitics of vitality transition. Renewable vitality diplomacy is thus the important thing catalyst for assembly national-level net-zero targets and limiting international warming to 1.5 levels Celsius.
One examine defines renewable vitality diplomacy as “the usage of international coverage to facilitate the event and utilisation of cleaner vitality sources and to boost vitality effectivity”. Underneath this conceptualisation, vitality diplomacy has two goals: to facilitate multilateral and bilateral cooperation on clear vitality and to counter the geopolitics of vitality transition.
There’s rising proof of the manifestation of renewable vitality diplomacy because it pertains to bilateral and multilateral engagement in accelerating transition. For instance, Singapore is partaking with a minimum of 5 regional international locations to import six gigawatts of low-carbon electrical energy by 2035. Vietnam plans to cooperate with a number of firms in Europe and different areas to extend the contribution of wind and photo voltaic to over 61 per cent of put in capability by 2050, whereas a number of regional international locations have cultivated a shut partnership with China to develop their renewable vitality sources.
These examples present that Southeast Asian international locations are starting to align vitality transition with the apply of diplomacy extra intently. Nonetheless, the area has but to develop a collective response to the opposite precedence of renewable vitality diplomacy, which is to handle the geopolitics of vitality transition. That is manifested in two methods: first, the dearth of belief and useful resource nationalism inside the area; second, the rising competitors between the US and China over crucial minerals and inexperienced expertise.
These challenges might be responded to in two methods.
First, Asean must facilitate consensus amongst political actors to handle impediments to vitality transition on the regional degree. One key pathway in the direction of addressing belief deficits, funding gaps and useful resource nationalism is the event of a regional establishment with legislative powers that may implement contracts, resolve disputes, administer funds and facilitate the alternate of correct knowledge. That is essential for accelerating the APG.
The principle problem to creating such an establishment is political, not technocratic, as particular person international locations in Southeast Asia are unwilling to switch sovereignty over their vitality techniques to a regional authority. Examples from Europe and Africa present {that a} regional establishment underpinned by legislative mandates can play a key function in driving vitality transition and decreasing belief deficits. Asean should prioritise regional dialogue with a step-by-step and multi-stakeholder method to creating an vitality establishment.
Second, Asean should handle the destructive impacts of the US-China rivalry on the area’s vitality transition. One of many key points to deal with is crucial minerals, that are important inputs to supply inexperienced applied sciences equivalent to photo voltaic panels and wind generators. Southeast Asia has substantial deposits of crucial minerals equivalent to copper, nickel, uncommon earths and bauxite. China’s domination of upstream and downstream elements of the provision chains of those important minerals is perceived as a risk to nationwide safety by the US and its allies, which has prompted the event of the Mineral Safety Partnership (MSP), an try by the West to develop an alternate provide chain of crucial minerals that excludes China and Russia.
The US has not too long ago requested Indonesia, the world’s largest nickel producer, to be part of the MSP. In the meantime, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand have grow to be associate international locations of BRICS, which analysts say can type a crucial mineral coalition to counter the MSP, resulting in additional stratification of worldwide and Southeast Asian vitality transition efforts. To deal with these geopolitical pressures, Asean can emphasise its centrality in partaking with exterior powers on crucial minerals by implementing the collective governance mechanisms beneficial within the Asean Plus Three Minerals Cooperation Work Plan.
Renewable vitality diplomacy is significant in addressing inner and exterior challenges to the vitality transition in Southeast Asia. But, a broader appreciation of the geopolitics of vitality transition inside Asean is sorely lacking. Renewable vitality is talked about within the Financial Group Blueprint and the Socio-Cultural Blueprint for 2025 however is lacking within the Political-Safety Group Blueprint. Provided that vitality generally and transition, particularly, is pushed by geopolitics, the 2045 iteration of the Asean Political-Safety Group Blueprint ought to recognise the necessity for a collective diplomatic response to the geopolitics of vitality transition and spotlight some avenues in the direction of confidence constructing on vitality points between regional and exterior actors.
Mirza Sadaqat Huda is Lead Researcher within the Local weather Change in Southeast Asia Programme, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.
This text was first printed in Fulcrum, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute’s blogsite.
