Oil and gas will continue to play important roles in Asia’s energy mix as developing economies look to energy security and affordability to help their economic growth, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said on Monday.
Net-zero goals should not undermine or come “at the expense of economic growth or vice versa,” Anwar told delegates at the Energy Asia conference in Malaysia, as carried by Reuters.
Malaysia, one of Southeast Asia’s biggest economies, is also a large exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
“Instead, Asia must take every opportunity to further dialogue and actions around how we can responsibly plan to enable every country (in) its right to development and lower carbon aspirations,” Anwar said.
Asian economies are still very much dependent on fossil fuels despite a surge in renewable power installations in the most populous countries and large carbon emitters, China and India.
India’s coal minister said at the end of 2022 that the country has no intention of ditching coal from its energy mix any time soon. Addressing a parliamentary committee, Coal Minister Pralhad Joshi said that coal would continue to play an important role in India until at least 2040, referring to the fuel as an affordable energy source for which demand has yet to peak in India.
China, for its part, is building or planning to build some 366 GW in new coal generation capacity, accounting for some 68% of global planned new coal capacity as of 2022. This is according to a report by climate think tank Global Energy Monitor, which also found that China accounted for more than half of the new global coal generation capacity that came online last year.
This is despite the fact that China has just reached its goal to have more non-fossil fuel installed electricity capacity than fossil fuels earlier than planned, with 50.9% of its power capacity coming from non-fossil fuel sources now. China is unmatched in renewable energy spending globally, investing in raising its solar and wind power capacity.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com