Variable renewable energy such as solar and wind will bring up electricity rates. This was the warning of the ASEAN Center for Energy in a report released last month. The extensive study cautions ASEAN countries not to blindly follow the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero Pathway, which it said makes assumptions and assertions of questionable viability in ASEAN.
“As the cost of energy increases and reliability decreases, industrial activities look elsewhere for more supportive energy policies. The real concern is that the poorer half of the population may no longer be able to afford electricity, causing thousands of people to slide deeper into poverty…” The study pointed out that “installed capacity from RE produces neither the same amount nor the same quality of dispatchable energy, compared to coal capacity…Overriding dispatchable energy sources in the grid system and overlooking the storage requirements could impact stable energy supply as the deployment of VRE is not able to completely replace the dispatchable energy sources.”
Coal, abundantly available in ASEAN, “also serves as a reliable baseload generation source that can provide a stable and continuous supply of electricity—one feature that VRE is lacking unless it is coupled with storage technology, which may inflate the costs further to achieve comparable stability.”