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Renewable Energy Development, Export-Led Industrialisation, and Its Implications for Climate Strategies in Asian Developing Countries

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Renewable Energy Transition in Asia

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Abstract

This chapter investigates how, and under what conditions, growth strategies can include attempts to moderate the negative effects of their strategies on climate change. In particular, it focuses on the possibilities for developing countries seeking to industrialise to make use of the current focus on renewables in order to meet climate change targets while continuing with their industrialisation strategies. The main argument is that a shift to renewable energy is not inconsistent with an industrialisation process if the latter is export-oriented and some or most of the initial costs of switching to renewable energy are borne by the state.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr Howard Nicholas (International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam) for the invaluable inputs and guidance, and Dr Nanda Kumar Janardhanan (Institute for Global Environmental Strategies) for the useful feedback.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The main aim of the energy transition is to achieve the zero-carbon by 2050.

  2. 2.

    Other possible solutions at present include energy efficiency improvement and utilisation of CCUS (Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage).

  3. 3.

    60% of this will be accounted by the solar PV followed by 25% of onshore wind.

  4. 4.

    A large number of co-benefits are foreseen by addressing the climate change, such as the improving access to the energy, eradication of energy poverty and increasing health benefits, which are often linking with SDGs.

  5. 5.

    There is a debate whether nuclear can also be regarded as renewables or not. This chapter excludes nuclear, mainly due to the data availability.

  6. 6.

    For example, under the UNFCCC, the Parties agreed to set the collective goal of 100 billion USD per year by 2020.

  7. 7.

    The financial instruments available include grants, debt, equity, green bond, FIT (Feed-in-tariffs) and guarantees.

  8. 8.

    It is also referred as the total overnight cost.

  9. 9.

    The majority of studies typically estimate the cost with the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE), taking the capital cost also into consideration.

  10. 10.

    Data is from “Total primary energy supply (TPES) by source, World 1990–2017” (see IEA, database).

  11. 11.

    Similar trend is also seen in electricity capacity.

  12. 12.

    The countries are classified based on the World Bank’s per capita income levels as of 2019. Following the widely used classification, high income countries are regarded as advanced countries, and the rest consisted of upper middle-, lower middle-, and low- income countries are classified as developing countries. The composite is developed for the countries that data is available by both IRENA and World Bank (see database section).

  13. 13.

    Marine energy is excluded from the table as the rounded figure is zero for all the income levels.

  14. 14.

    No data is provided for the small hydropower.

  15. 15.

    It consists of South East, East, and South Asian countries, excluding the high-income countries. High income countries are Brunei Darussalam, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, Korea Rep., Macau SAR, and Singapore.

  16. 16.

    Author’s composite. Countries are classified based on the availability of renewable electricity generation in IRENA, and per capita income and merchandise export by World Bank in 2017, except Afghanistan, Cambodia, and Lao PDR. For these three countries, 2016 data is used for export data as a proxy.

  17. 17.

    Marine technology is excluded from both figures as the figure is zero.

  18. 18.

    The analysis in developing countries as a whole also derived the similar results in general.

  19. 19.

    In 2017, Asia’s solar generation accounts for roughly half of the world.

  20. 20.

    For developing countries as a whole, Brazil and Indonesia account for 71% and 13% of total bioenergy generation in non-manufacturing export-based economies respectively.

  21. 21.

    India’s export has been dominated by the manufacturing products since 1980s, which account for around 70% of total merchandise exports.

  22. 22.

    Both India and Lao PDR are considered as service-based economies based on GDP composition. The shares of service, industry and agriculture sectors are 50%, 32% and 16% respectively for Lao PDR, and roughly 50%, 27% and 15% of GDP respectively for India in 2017 (see WDI database).

  23. 23.

    For example, the solar PV industry imports 90% of the solar cell from China. The concessional loans for the solar project come from Germany, the U.S., and World Bank (see Bloomberg NEF 2019).

  24. 24.

    See Indian Trade Portal for more details; https://www.indiantradeportal.in/vs.jsp?lang=0&id=0,25,857,3901

  25. 25.

    The recent COVID-19 outbreak and the subsequent lockdown has posed a greater challenge in India, through disruption of the supply chain, halting the production process, and fall in the global demand. India is attempting not only to increase domestic production but also to attract more foreign investment as one of the destinations for the relocation of supply chain away from China by creating a favourable business environment.

  26. 26.

    Electricity export accounts for 26% of total exports in 2017 (OECD 2018).

  27. 27.

    Negative environmental consequences and the impact of livelihood and biosphere by the construction of dams have been well-reported (see, for example, Blake and Barney 2018).

  28. 28.

    The governments suffer from budget deficit since 2000, and persistent current account trade deficit since 1980s (OECD/Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia 2018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India

    Eri Ikeda

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  1. Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), Hayama, Japan

    Nandakumar Janardhanan

  2. Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), New Delhi, India

    Vaibhav Chaturvedi

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Ikeda, E. (2021). Renewable Energy Development, Export-Led Industrialisation, and Its Implications for Climate Strategies in Asian Developing Countries. In: Janardhanan, N., Chaturvedi, V. (eds) Renewable Energy Transition in Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8905-8_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8905-8_5

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