Despite South Asia having the lowest per capita energy use globally, the region’s rapid economic transformation is dramatically increasing energy consumption, with rising demand this decade and beyond.
South Asia has rich natural and demographic resources. Still, it faces multiple development hurdles, such as dependence on fossil fuels, inadequate and undersized infrastructure, climate change, and limited access to capital arising from policy uncertainty and regulatory barriers. Although South Asia has made good progress in providing electricity access, even to hard-to-reach populations.
“The reliability and availability of clean, affordable power is key to maintaining regional development momentum and economic growth,” said Jiwan Acharya, project officer.
The South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) provides a platform to help spur the region to grow and develop together. With funding from the Clean Energy Fund under the Clean Energy Financing Partnership Facility, the Promoting Energy Transition through Regional Cooperation and Integration in South Asia identifies and prepares cross-border energy-related projects, implement capacity development, and improve collaboration between the energy agencies in the SASEC subregion.
Specifically, the project will (i) analyze market mechanisms to leverage opportunities in the region and assess bottlenecks to cross-border project implementation and (ii) support harmonious collaboration in implementing energy-related subregional initiatives among the SASEC countries.
The project will also support selected utilities in developing a digitalization road map and assessing appropriate models for creating a country and regional digital platform. These platforms will enable agencies to share information on power demand, supply, and transmission availability and provide real-time information on power trade transactions. The selected utilities will also be given capacity-building support on cybersecurity.
"The reliability and availability of clean, affordable power is key to maintaining regional development momentum and economic growth."
~ Jiwan Acharya, ADB principal energy specialist
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