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China's innovation helps Southeast Asia's energy green transformation

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2024/7/30 Viewed：

Online Consultation

Dean Rizzeti, director of energy policy at the Energy Laboratory (Cambodia), said that in the global climate response environment, Southeast Asian countries represented by Cambodia should accelerate the upgrading of their local energy systems. Chinese companies, as an important force in the global clean energy field, are strengthening cooperation with Southeast Asian countries to jointly promote the green and low-carbon transformation of energy.

"In the history of new energy development, there is no more exciting era than now. China's new energy industry is innovating and developing at an unprecedented rate, and people are changing the world." Dean Rizzeti, director of energy policy at the Energy Laboratory (Cambodia), a think tank that focuses on the development of clean energy, said in an exclusive interview with a reporter from China Energy News recently. In his view, in the global climate response environment, Southeast Asian countries represented by Cambodia should accelerate the upgrading of their local energy system. Chinese companies, as an important force in the global clean energy field, are strengthening cooperation with Southeast Asian countries to jointly promote the green and low-carbon transformation of energy.

China Energy News: How do you evaluate China’s achievements in the field of clean energy?

Dean Rizette: China has made amazing progress in the field of clean energy. The difficulties and challenges in the field of clean energy five years ago have now been dealt with and solved, and Chinese energy companies are actively using innovation to solve various problems.

Taking this year's SNEC Photovoltaic Conference as an example, the exhibition is impressive, with endless innovations in the field of renewable energy, and industrial innovation is developing increasingly in-depth. It can be said that we are in the tide of huge changes in innovative applications, and the world is changing.

China Energy News: How do you view the development potential of renewable energy such as Cambodia's local scenery?

Dean Rizedi: Cambodia has huge potential for renewable energy development, not only has rich solar energy resources, high-quality wind energy resources, but also sufficient hydropower production capacity. Cambodia is fully able to use the above renewable energy resources to achieve energy self-sufficiency. With the help of local natural resource endowments and the local very young labor resources, Cambodia's energy transformation has met the required conditions.

From a sub-sector perspective, both distributed and centralized energy have clear development paths. The Cambodian government has set clear goals for the development of renewable energy and hopes to strengthen the construction of the existing power grid, striving to add 2 GW of photovoltaic installed capacity and 1 GW of pumped storage capacity within 10 years. At the same time, the Cambodian government has also paid great attention to wind power generation for many years, and wind power generation is expected to become a powerful supplement to photovoltaic and pumped storage.

We have also seen many potential application scenarios of distributed energy technology in the Cambodian market, and they also have broad development space.

China Energy News: What obstacles are there for Cambodia to develop renewable energy?

Dean Rizedi: I think the biggest obstacle Cambodia faces to achieve its energy transformation goal is the excessive proportion of fossil fuels in the existing energy system. The system has been in operation for many years. Since the 1990s, Cambodia has gradually developed from low power supply rates and built a local power grid. Not only does it have hydropower access, but a large amount of investment has also poured into coal-fired power plants.

In response to the energy transformation goal, Cambodia should accelerate its pace. Energy enterprises and government departments need to strengthen cooperation, use advanced technology to connect as much clean energy as possible on the basis of existing systems, and achieve balance of complex power grids. In addition, the solution to these problems requires enterprises and governments to provide more ideas from a more stable traditional energy system to a more flexible energy system, how to operate the energy market, how to complete the energy transformation, and what management tools are needed.

At the same time, Cambodia's energy system also faces challenges brought about by new changes in power contracts. In the past, Cambodia was able to utilize stable coal-fired and hydropower contracts. Renewable energy is relatively more flexible and new power contracts are required to ensure power supply.

China Energy News: How should Chinese energy companies cooperate with Southeast Asian countries to jointly promote energy transformation?

Dean Rizette: If Chinese energy companies want to establish long-term cooperative relations with Southeast Asian countries, they should start from a systematic thinking, create value based on the actual development of Southeast Asian countries, and jointly promote energy transformation.

First of all, Chinese companies should have a deeper understanding of the actual environment of Southeast Asian countries. For example, many Southeast Asian countries have many islands that may not have enough port infrastructure to import fossil fuels and should take these details into account before conducting business.

Secondly, we should have a better understanding of the policy situation of Southeast Asian countries. Many Southeast Asian countries are a single buyer market, and energy policies are crucial to business development. Chinese companies should understand more about market operation models to achieve win-win results between both sides.

Finally, we also use system thinking to view how market operations are done, and we will understand more about how supply and demand are formed, rather than simply becoming a project supporter. For example, Southeast Asian countries like Cambodia are undergoing energy transformation, and when we see it as a system, multinational energy companies may be able to better choose global solutions and better serve the local market.

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