Southeast Asia requires $2.5 trillion of investment in energy infrastructure over the next 25 years in order to achieve a balanced and efficient supply for all its countries, an energy organization said Thursday.
The countries in the region should further reform respective domestic energy markets and establish improved policy frameworks in order to achieve the staggering investment total, International EnergyAgency (IEA) Director of Energy Markets and Security Keisuke Sadamori told Anadolu Agency.
'The reliability and sustainability of Southeast Asia'senergy system depends on investment,' he said, citing his group's World Energy Outlook (WEO) report, which was launched at the sidelines of the ongoing Association of Southeast Asian Nations EnergyMinisters Meeting in Kuala Lumpur.
Sadamori said greater integration of the region's markets could help to catalyze the development ofenergy resources, facilitate more efficient use of the region's resources and enhance energy security.
The report highlights the significant progress achieved by the region in expanding energy access but urges increased action as 120 million people remain without access to electricity while almost 280 million lack clean cooking facilities.
It also called for more efforts to reduce subsidies for fossil fuels, nothing that the region spent $36 billion on fossil-fuel subsidies in 2014 despite reforms in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar.
The WEO report presents a scenario in which Southeast Asia's energy demand increases by 80 percent by 2040, though the region's per capita energyuse remains well below the global average.
Despite policies aimed at scaling up the deployment of renewable resources, the share of fossil fuels in the region's energy mix is expected to rise to about 80 percent by 2040, in stark contrast to the declining trend seen in many parts of the world.
On Malaysia, the report pointed out that the country'senergy demand almost doubles by that time, with fossil fuels continuing to meet over 90 percent of demand throughout the period and coal overtaking oil and gas to become the primary fuel in Malaysia's energy mix.
By P Prem Kumar
Anadolu Agency
enerji@aa.com.tr