Part 2 of a series on ETM deals in Southeast Asia. 2024 will be a year of crosscurrents for Southeast Asia’s energy transition. With political risk running high, we look into the technical debates and developments that will determine how fast regional analysts and system planners can fill the gap between high-level policy statements and the functional roadmaps that markets need.

Changing national policies, shifting energy investment trends, and evolving electrification technology can make demand growth projections using trend-based forecasting obsolete. System designs that can enable operational and contractual flexibility to accommodate unpredictable demand patterns are important to cope with the increasing complexity.

The primary barrier to closing coal plants in many markets is the presence of long-term supply agreements, coupled with a lack of open data on the financial implications of these agreements.

TransitionZero’s Coal Asset Transition (CAT) tool for the Philippines covers all 58 of the countries’ coal units, backed by data from over 200 PSAs covering over 65% of generation from 2020 to 2023. CAT offers comprehensive asset-level insights into the Philippine coal fleet, including estimates on the cost of abatement and the cost of buying out remaining power supply agreements for each plant.

Southeast Asian countries are being misled about the emissions savings potential of co-firing ammonia with coal. New analysis by TransitionZero confirms that converting Asian coal power plants to run on ammonia would be an immense waste of capital that could do more climate harm than good.