KUALA LUMPUR (March 28): Keppel Infrastructure’s chief executive officer (CEO) Cindy Lim said the world should focus on measuring the speed of decarbonisation progress instead of relying on instantaneous snapshots of scorecards as the latter does not take into account the macro-level changes between planning and implementation.
“If you see the performance of the rate of decarbonisation and the intensity of [carbon dioxide] emissions, many a times it is because of the factors such as what countries are naturally endowed with renewable energy sources, the ability and accessibility to financing.
“[Most important are] the readiness of the community, companies, and industry at large, how it [decarbonisation plans] is being designed and how fast can it be modernised,” Lim said at a panel discussion held at the Siemens Energy Asia Pacific Energy Week 2022 on Monday (March 28).
The discussion was also joined by Indonesia’s Minister for Energy and Mineral Resources Arifin Tasrif, who outlined Indonesia’s plans to move towards green energy by exploring nuclear energy, increasing the adoption of biodiesel and ending the reliance on coal-fired power plants.
Lim highlighted that the motivation for the pivot towards renewable energy transition has always been underscored by the search for higher energy efficiency, minimising environmental impact as well as controlling and mitigating pollution.
She added that in recent times, a convergence of willingness to act at scale and speed on decarbonisation had been precipitated from the Paris Accord level down to the demands from the community and investors along with companies and the industry have put in decisive decisions to act.
Meanwhile, Fraser Thompson, the founder and chief strategy officer of Sun Cable, an Australia-based solar energy infrastructure network developer, said he is excited about the transition to renewable energy in the Asia Pacific region.
“We are in the centre of some of the biggest trends that are happening globally, if you look from a demand perspective, we have got 550 million people that will be living in cities by 2030 so there will be a huge wave of urbanisation and that drives electricity demand.
“We have also got this huge shift within households from using 50% of fossil fuels in electricity generation to green electrification,” Thompson added.