Commentary

Bandung 1955, the Non-Aligned Movement, Sukarno, Nehru, Tito, Nasser, etc. – like leaves from a sepia photo album faded as time moved on.  Yet in the interconnected global economy where international investments and financing routinely ignores borders, is there room to dust off the “South-South” paradigm for energy development?  Especially in a sector such as renewable energy where the challenge and risk profiles are similar along a “South-South” axis, there may yet be some juice left in that old model.

The world can no longer afford to be intimidated by the magnitude of the climate crisis, nor into believing that we must choose between economic prosperity and environmental security. Climate change presents one of the greatest challenges in human history, one that transcends national boundaries, income, ideology, ethnicity. But these challenges should be viewed as economic opportunities.

Reuters recently reported on the Chinese government's plans to consolidate Chinese polysilicon capacity.

ASEAN countries have some way to go in using energy efficiently. This despite the region’s energy intensity - the amount of energy used to produce each dollar of gross domestic product (GDP) – declining steadily over the years.

Singapore’s highly developed economy is widely considered to be one of the most dynamic and successful in the world. It acts as a regional hub for shipping and petroleum refining and hosts successful export industries in petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and high-value technology, which have attracted significant global investment.

China's Ministry of Commerce declared provisional antidumping (AD) duties against solar-grade polysilicon from the U.S. and South Korea.

By virtue of its extended Exclusive Economic Zone, Malaysia has a maritime area, which is four times larger than its land mass. 

Fossil hydrocarbon and gas combustion has provided the bulk of power distribution reliability for over one century. Seemingly profitable unidirectional flow, from extraction to aerosolized dispensation, disavowed true cost of deleterious atmospheric and organic consequence.

For more than 10 000 years the climate and CO2 concentration has been very stable, but now we humans are pushing it to a dangerous level.

There are encouraging news in promoting green energy including that Japan will become a new star of solar power. However, many indications show that the tendency of using nuclear power to generate electricity is still far from extinction. Among them is the case in Taiwan whose President ,Mr. Ma Yin-Jieu ,recently staying one night at one of the nuclear power plants reflecting the continued support for using nuclear power. It is sad and irony to the country which enjoys more resources of wind and solar power than Japan and Germany but contrubutes so little to the clean environment compared to those two contries. Especially it is among the top players of green energy equipments and solutions supply in terms of solar power and LED lighting. The construction of the fourth nuclear power plant on the island has long been a political issue in the past two decades. It has already paid tremendous cost for the delay. But the decision of abolishing it seems still remote even though people have rejected it in several referendums. Why is it so difficult for many countries including Iran or Taiwan to abolishing nuclear power plants? First of all, it is the replacement interest of current coal based system which is still playing an important role for the country. The second factor is that the lobbyists representing nuclear power plants providers have successfully built connection with influential politicians who have helped ambiguous safety measures pass the parliament before. The third factor is to keep the possibility of making nuclear weapons. All reasons look simple but are getting more and more difficult to defend. From the development of wind farm and solar power plant around the island, we notice that wind farms are ahead of solar power plants. This is because most of the wind farms are owned by Taipower directly or by other private companies which have joint venture with Taipower. On top of that nearly all of them are managed by retired high rank officers of Taipower while the solar power plants are seen only sporadically on some private companies' or local governments' projects claiming to nurturing the industry symbolically. Though the pressure to use green energy is getting higher, but as long as the government is reluctant to give up nuclear power policy and hesitating to strongly promote solar power, the existing interest group which is well linked with Taipower is going to keep the island away from clean environment for a long time.

Exploring journals, internet, and news, you would find enormous literature and hot discussion over energy issues. Many of the articles and comments are based on economic theories. In this article we are going to criticize some aspects and presumptions of standard economic theories.

In our practice, executive classrooms and group interventions, and when talking Energy and Energy transition- I focus a lot on three important elements for the realization of successful energy (transition) programs :

The solar photovoltaic (PV) market is poised to rise from the ashes of its 2011 crisis to grow to $155 billion in 2018, as market forces engineer a turnaround to a healthy 10.5% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

Lux Research recently published a report, “Getting to Nearly-Zero Energy Buildings- Ambitious Targets, Modest Progress,” examining the drivers behind the new construction market for nearly-zero and net-zero energy buildings and projecting the market size over the next five years for building envelope materials in such buildings.

India has and continues to face significant challenges in reliable supply of electricity. This was manifest in the country’s worst blackout due to the failure of power grids, affecting states where 50% of India’s 1.2 billion people live.

One of the most interesting and telling trends discussed on the report, “Finding the Perfect Partner in the Global Grid Storage Market” is the clear focus on start-up financing and support in the American markets, contrasted with the heavy activity in fundamental university research in the Asian markets.