ASEAN Energy Outlook Projects Emissions Rising 22% by 2050 Despite Climate Pledges

Cleaner energy still leaves emissions above today's levels

Southeast Asia's energy emissions would be about 22% higher in 2050 than in 2024 even under the most ambitious transition scenario in the ninth ASEAN Energy Outlook, exposing a gap between the region's energy plans and its climate promises.

The ASEAN Centre for Energy (ACE) projects that emissions will remain above current levels through 2060 under all three pathways it examines. Its strongest cooperation scenario brings emissions roughly two thirds below the trajectory based on current trends by 2060, yet emissions level off around the middle of the century before increasing again.

Seven of the 10 countries covered have promised net zero emissions or carbon neutrality by 2050. Unlike the previous edition, published in 2024, the latest outlook leaves out a pathway designed around those promises.

ACE's official publication page dates the launch of the ninth ASEAN Energy Outlook to 8 October 2026, following the energy ministers' meeting on 7 October. Ministers endorsed the document, which examines energy demand, supply and emissions through 2060.

The central challenge is concrete: factories, vehicles, homes and data centres will need much more energy, while coal and gas plants continue operating. Under the ASEAN Coordinated Transition Scenario (ACTS), final energy consumption rises from 485 million tonnes of oil equivalent in 2025 to 1,073 million in 2060. That measure combines different fuels and electricity into a common unit, allowing their energy content to be compared.

Efficiency and cleaner technology make a substantial difference. Without stronger coordinated action, consumption reaches 2,047 million tonnes of oil equivalent in 2060, more than four times the 2025 starting point. ACTS holds consumption to nearly half that level, but demand still more than doubles.

What changed in the outlook?

ACE uses historical data from 2005 to 2024 and two models developed by the Stockholm Environment Institute. The Low Emissions Analysis Platform tracks energy use, supply and emissions. The Next Energy Modeling system for Optimization helps select the least costly power system within the assumptions imposed.

Three scenarios explore different choices. The Baseline Scenario extends current trends. The ASEAN Member States Target Scenario reflects stated national policies and targets. ACTS adds stronger cooperation on electricity trade, efficiency, technology and investment.

ACE said member governments agreed by consensus to replace the previous pathway based on carbon neutrality pledges. National net zero dates are no longer targets used to build the scenarios.

ACE, the intergovernmental body responsible for the outlook, explained the purpose of ACTS:

The key point is that the ACTS is a coordinated energy-transition scenario, not a net-zero compliance pathway.

Under current trends, emissions more than triple by 2050 from 2,465 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2024. Under national policies, they reach 5,185 million tonnes, more than twice the starting level. Carbon dioxide equivalent expresses the warming effects of different greenhouse gases in a common unit.

ACTS limits that growth to about 22% by 2050. Faster retirement of fossil generation and deeper reductions in sectors where emissions are difficult to remove would be needed to reach net zero, ACE said.

Climate promises and energy plans follow different tracks

Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam have targets for net zero or carbon neutrality by 2050. Indonesia's formal target is 2060 or sooner, although President Prabowo Subianto said in 2024 that he was optimistic about reaching it by 2050. Myanmar and the Philippines have no target covering their entire economies.

National commitments have changed over time, while ASEAN's regional energy plan works through successive periods of five years:

• 2022: Singapore updated its development strategy to include net zero by 2050, and Vietnam approved its 2050 target through a prime ministerial decision.
• 2023: ASEAN economic ministers endorsed a Strategy for Carbon Neutrality without setting a regional target year.
• 2024: The previous ASEAN Energy Outlook included a scenario based on carbon neutrality pledges.
• November 2025: Thailand submitted a national climate contribution bringing its net zero date forward from 2065 to 2050.
• 2026 to 2030: The current ASEAN Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation sets the region's immediate energy targets.

National pledges can include forests, land use and offsets, allowing carbon absorbed elsewhere in an economy to balance some energy emissions. Carbon neutrality generally refers to carbon dioxide, while net zero greenhouse gas targets cover a wider group of gases. Each country's accounting rules therefore matter.

The International Energy Agency's 2024 regional outlook estimated that fulfilling national net zero goals would require emissions to fall by almost two thirds by 2050. Its list included eight countries with targets, counting Indonesia's 2060 goal and Thailand's then existing 2065 deadline.

Putra Adhiguna, managing director of the Energy Shift Institute, said national energy planning needs to catch up with climate commitments:

Individual countries' energy plans will need to be better reconciled with the pledges,

The IEA's stated policies pathway projects energy related carbon dioxide emissions rising by about one third by 2050. ACE's national policies pathway projects a much larger increase in emissions measured as carbon dioxide equivalent. The outlooks use different modelling frameworks and emissions measures, while both show continued growth under existing policies.

The 2030 targets demand faster construction

ASEAN's energy cooperation plan sets three goals for 2030: renewables should supply 30% of total primary energy and account for 45% of installed electricity capacity, while primary energy intensity should fall 40% from its 2005 level.

Primary energy includes energy available before conversion into electricity or other usable forms. Energy intensity measures the energy needed to produce a unit of economic output. Lower intensity means an economy can produce more goods and services with less energy.

ASEAN entered 2025 below all three targets in its previous plan. The outlook's executive summary says reaching the new renewable capacity target requires about 31 gigawatts of additions annually, compared with a historical average of 6.5 GW. ACE's main publication overview gives a lower requirement of about 26 GW a year. Both indicate that construction must accelerate sharply.

The executive summary warns that keeping deployment at its historical rate through 2027 would push the annual requirement to roughly 55 GW for the remaining years. Waiting would leave more projects, grid connections and financing to be completed in less time.

The executive summary records about 91 GW of fossil capacity and 62 GW of renewable capacity added during 2015 to 2024; other figures accompanying the outlook put those additions at about 85 GW and 67 GW respectively. In both sets of figures, fossil construction exceeded renewable construction.

Why more renewable capacity does not end coal use

ACTS projects renewables supplying about 64% of generating capacity in 2060. Its renewable share is just under 68% in 2050. These percentages describe the maximum output equipment can deliver, rather than the electricity it produces across a year.

Solar panels generate when sunlight is available, and wind turbines depend on wind conditions. Fuel burning plants can operate for longer periods when fuel and maintenance allow. A large renewable capacity share can therefore coexist with substantial fossil electricity generation.

Coal still supplies about a tenth of regional electricity in 2060 under ACTS. The model permits up to 20 GW of new coal capacity in each member state where more efficient coal plants are the cheapest option under its assumptions.

Coal and gas plants together account for about 1,500 million tonnes of the 3,355 million tonnes of energy emissions projected for 2060. That is roughly 45% of the total, making their continued operation central to the remaining emissions gap.

Dinita Setyawati of energy research organisation Ember said renewable additions must displace fossil generation to bring emissions down. The IEA's figures show why: coal generated half of Southeast Asia's electricity in 2023 but produced 80% of emissions from electricity generation.

A faster transition would build and retire more

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) takes a different starting point in its scenario aligned with limiting warming to 1.5°C. It works backwards from the remaining global carbon budget, the amount of carbon dioxide the world can emit within a chosen warming limit, to identify the energy changes required.

IRENA's pathway puts Southeast Asian renewable capacity at about 2,800 GW in 2050, or around 90% of the total. ACTS projects about 1,800 GW. The difference is approximately 1,000 GW, meaning the IRENA pathway requires about 56% more renewable capacity than ACTS.

Plants burning coal, gas and oil without carbon capture fall to about 190 GW under the IRENA pathway, compared with about 730 GW under ACTS. Carbon capture equipment collects some emissions before they enter the atmosphere.

Reaching IRENA's renewable level would require additions of about 100 GW annually through 2050. The region installed about 11 GW in 2025, roughly a ninth of that pace. Even IRENA's pathway leaves around 600 million tonnes of energy related carbon dioxide emissions in 2050.

ACE's scenario still delivers major gains: the economy grows more than fourfold through 2060, while cleaner energy and efficiency prevent about 79% of the extra emissions that growth would otherwise create. Bringing total emissions down requires those gains to outpace demand growth and replace more fossil generation.

What changes in homes, transport and industry?

Electricity supplies 57.2% of final energy consumption in ACTS by 2060, compared with 27.1% under the national policies scenario. That shift changes how people travel, cook, cool their homes and manufacture products.

Cars and motorcycles become fully electric by 2060 in ACTS, with electrification extending to buses and trucks. Electricity supplies about 43% of transport energy by then. Compared with the baseline, the scenario cuts transport oil use by about 8 million barrels a day in 2060.

Households adopt electric cooking about 15 years earlier than national targets envisage, and every household air conditioner becomes a model with high energy efficiency by 2060. Better appliances and lighting bring household energy consumption below both the baseline projection and today's level.

Food, textile and paper industries become almost fully electric. As coal based blast furnaces retire, steel production shifts towards electric furnaces using scrap and ironmaking using hydrogen. These changes reduce direct fuel burning while increasing the need for reliable, cleaner electricity.

Data centres add another pressure on supply. AEO9 estimates they account for about a fifth of electricity demand growth between 2025 and 2030. The IEA also expects cooling to drive almost a third of regional electricity demand growth through 2035, making efficient buildings and air conditioners an immediate planning issue.

Power trade needs cables, rules and financing

ACTS expands electricity interconnection capacity across borders about twentyfold by 2060, while power exchanged between grid subregions grows about twelvefold. Fifteen new international lines join the eight already operating.

Those connections allow surplus renewable electricity in one country to supply demand in another. Sharing a wider pool of generation also gives power systems more options when local solar or wind output falls.

The October ministerial meeting reported approvals for trading electricity in multiple directions under the Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore Power Integration Project. Work also includes a Cambodia and Laos study framework and proposed links between Cambodia and Vietnam and between the Philippines and Indonesia.

The ASEAN Power Grid vision runs to 2045. Regional work covers coordinated planning and rules for installing, maintaining, repairing and protecting submarine cables. Further domestic consultations on cable guidelines are expected during Singapore's ASEAN chairmanship in 2027.

Financing remains substantial. ACTS requires about US$405 billion in average annual investment through 2060 across energy supply and energy use. Separately, the executive summary identifies US$4.2 trillion in additional investment in energy use compared with the baseline over 2026 to 2060. That second figure is a cumulative amount in 2020 prices.

The cost of delay and the next decisions

Southeast Asian clean energy projects face financing costs at least twice those in advanced economies or China, according to the IEA. In 2023, the region received only 2% of global clean energy spending despite accounting for 5% of global energy demand and 9% of the world's population.

The IEA estimates that a pathway aligned with regional climate goals needs more than US$190 billion in clean energy investment in 2035. Its figure covers clean energy, while ACE's US$405 billion annual requirement covers a broader range of supply and consumption investments.

Climate damage adds another economic risk. The Asian Development Bank estimated in 2024 that a scenario with high global emissions could reduce economic output across developing Asia and the Pacific by 16.9% by 2070. Estimated losses reach 30.2% in Vietnam and 26.8% in Indonesia.

ACE recommends an explicit regional energy direction extending to at least 2050, with successive energy cooperation plans serving as milestones. Its policy priorities include efficiency standards, planning new generation alongside plant retirements, reducing oil dependence and aligning finance with transition priorities.

A future outlook could examine a pathway to zero emissions, but no such scenario has been confirmed for AEO10. ACE said the next edition's scenarios will be decided through consultations and consensus among member states. For the current plan, the nearest concrete test is whether renewable construction and efficiency improvements accelerate enough to meet the 2030 targets.

Key Points

• ASEAN's strongest cooperation scenario projects energy emissions about 22% above 2024 levels in 2050.
• Seven countries covered by the outlook have promised net zero or carbon neutrality by 2050.
• The latest outlook replaces the previous scenario based on climate pledges with one focused on coordinated energy measures.
• Meeting the 2030 renewable capacity target requires about 26 to 31 GW of new installations annually, according to ACE's published figures.
• Coal and gas plants produce roughly 45% of projected energy emissions in 2060 under ACTS.
• The transition scenario requires average annual investment of about US$405 billion through 2060.
• A pathway to zero emissions is an option for future modelling, with no confirmed decision for the next outlook.