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Are Asia's Energy Choices Limited to Coal, Gas or Nuclear?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Andrew DeWit
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Late last month, the Asia Pacific hosted two very important and starkly contrasting international conferences on the region's energy and climate choices. A very high level, invitation-only summit in Singapore declared that the region's energy options are limited to choosing from a mix of coal, gas and nuclear, with renewable energy's role merely marginal. But a far more diverse and innovative conference in Honolulu, one that included the US military, demonstrated that renewable energy is the region's economically and environmentally rational choice. As we shall see, there was one key difference between these polarized positions on what is perhaps the single most important issue of our era. The Singapore event focused on the supply side of energy whereas the Hawaii summit examined the energy system in its entirety. The Hawaii event paid particular attention to the increasingly crucial role of microgrids and other enabling infrastructures that reshape the demand side as well as the supply side. This short article reviews both events and asks why the Singapore summit ignored the role of smart networks. We then conclude by showing how smart infrastructures are becoming central to climate-change mitigation and adaptation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 14 , Issue 13 , July 2016 , e6
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2016

References

Notes

1 See p. 4 “Community Microgrids: A Guide for Mayors and City Leaders Seeking Clean, Reliable and Locally Controlled Energy,” June 2015.

2 The NBR's 2016 Pacific Energy Summit's website is here.

3 European oil firms were dismayed: “We thought that Exxon and Chevron might sign up to things like this, but then do very little about it,” says one executive at a major European oil company. “But they haven't even done that,” in Ed Crooks and Kiran Stacey, “Big Oil: From black to green,” Financial Times, June 29, 2016.

4 See Singapore Economic Development Board, “Clean Energy,” nd.

5 The NBR Pacific Energy Summit reports are all available here.

6 See Mark C. Thurber, “Coal, Gas, or Nuclear: Asia's Inconvenient Energy Choice,” 2016 Pacific Energy Summit Working Paper.

7 See Steckel, Jan Christoph, Ottmar Edenhofer and Michael Jacob, “Drivers for the renaissance of coal,” PNAS, Vol. 112, No. 29, July 21, 2015: pp 8799-9140.

8 See “The promise of carbon capture and storage,” Exxon Mobil, nd.

9 See p. 33 “BP Statistical Review of World Energy, June 2016”.

10 On this, see (in Japanese) figure 214-1-8 on power generation in the 2016 Energy White Paper, p. 186.

11 See the website.

12 See Joel Makower, “Two Steps Forward: The Emergence of VERGE,” GreenBiz, April 18, 2011.

13 See here.

14 On the goals, see “Governor Ige Signs Bill Setting 100 Percent Renewable Energy Goal in Power Sector,” Governor of the State of Hawaii, June 8, 2015.

15 See the ulupono Initiative website.

16 For the details, see NextEra Energy's website.

17 Opterra describes the range of services it provides on its website.

18 In 2014, just under 70 percent of Hawaii's power was generated by burning oil. On this, see “Hawaii: Profile Analysis,” US Energy Information Administration, September 17, 2015.

19 On the project, see Duane Shimogawa, “Japan partners on OTEC project,” Pacific Business News, September 18, 2015.

20 On the Meetings, see “Governor signs historic agreement with Department of the Navy to advance clean energy opportunities,” Governor of the State of Hawaii, June 21, 2016.

21 The archive can be accessed, after registration, at this site.

22 See Wendy Koch, “”How to Avoid Storm Blackouts? Colleges Go Big With Microgrids,“ National Geographic, March 18, 2016.

23 On the system, see Karen Henry, “New Energy System Will Save Stanford $420M,” Energy Manager Today, April 20, 2015.

24 See Lisa Lapin and Kate Chesley, “New Stanford energy system cuts greenhouse gas emissions 68 percent and fossil fuel 65 percent,” Stanford News, 2015.

25 See Scott Blair, “Editors' Choice & Best Energy/Industrial: Stanford Energy System Innovations,” March 19, 2016.

26 See “Frequently Asked Questions: Stanford Energy System Innovations (SESI) Program,” nd.

27 “Distributed Generation: Cleaner, Cheaper, Stronger, Microgrids in the Evolving Power System,” Pew Research, February 26, 2016.

28 See “International District Energy Association and Microgrid Resources Coalition announce merger to promote wider adoption of microgrids,” May 18, 2015.

29 “District Energy in Cities: Unlocking the Potential of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy,” United Nations Environment Programme, May, 2015.

30 See Towards a Sustainable Future: Energy Connectivity in Asia and the Pacific,“ United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, May 16, 2016.