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This piece was written with Graham Provost, intern at the World Resources Institute. The agenda at this weeks Pacific Energy Summit, hosted by the National Bureau of Asian Research, in Hanoi, Vietnam, includes increasing energy security, expanding access to energy, and decarbonizing the power sector. Given these goals, plus the staggering growth in energy demand in Asia, as well asincreasingly volatile fossil fuel prices and rapidly falling renewable energy costs, there are many opportunities to scale up renewable energy throughout the region. (For more on renewable energys rapid growth see here and here.) In order to take advantage of this fast-moving sector and develop internationally competitive domestic industries, countries need to have a strong capacity for innovation. A new conference paper, Taking Renewable Energy to Scale in Asia, explores these opportunities and challenges for the Summit Participants.
competitive edge internationally, making infant industry protection much less necessary and building a more robust, sustainable industry in the long term. This, in turn, will lower the costs of renewable energy for consumers and taxpayers. Government can invest in a number of important functions to develop a countrys innovative capacity. These include well-known strategies of fostering research and development (R&D), and training a high-caliber workforce. But for the energy sector in particular, these must also include building necessary energy infrastructure and creating a regulatory environment that supports innovation. Governments should work to ensure that their domestic innovation systems are effective at:
Creating and sharing new knowledge Building competence Creating collaborative networks Developing infrastructure Providing finance Establishing governance and the regulatory environment Creating markets
Conclusion
In Asia, renewables promise to become a significant industry, driven by falling renewable energy prices, fossil fuel price volatility, public health impacts around fossil fuels, and fast-growing regional energy demand. However, the
highly regulated nature of the power sector means that policymakers play a uniquely influential role in encouraging innovation and creating effective government policies that will be crucial to supporting industry success. By first identifying segments of the value chain where they can compete and then supporting entrepreneurs with a healthy innovation system, Asian countries can take advantage of the global energy transformation to drive their own economic development. For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see Letha Tawneys paper for the Pacific Energy Summit, Taking Renewable Energy to Scale in Asia.