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Scaling Up Investments in Southeast Asia ' s Sustainable Infrastructure
Building a sustainable infrastructure — how can it be scaled up to be commercially viable ?
Contributed By :
• Tim Rockell , Chair , BritCham Energy & Utilities Committee
• Mark Florance , Co-Chair , BritCham Energy and Utilities Committee ; and Investment Committee , Climate Investor One Fund , Climate Investor Two Fund
• Allard Nooy , Co-Chair , BritCham Energy and Utilities Committee ; and CEO , InfraCo Asia Development Pte Ltd
• William Hudson , Head of Southeast Asia , The Carbon Trust , and
• Tom Moody , Regional Director SE Asia , Climate and Energy of UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office
The move to a more sustainable world is gaining momentum . Two key elements to accelerating that transition are technology and financing . Sustainable infrastructure , particularly related to energy , is the backbone of this transition . Ultimately , sustainable infrastructure will only be successful if it is commercially viable . To achieve this at the scale required to produce an effective energy transition requires projects that can be scaled up and remain financially attractive . This will require a drive towards greater innovation around systems thinking , financing models and investment decisions .
Collaboration is a key watchword as we advance towards COP26 in November . The E & U committee has been building its connectivity in the region and brought together policy makers , thought leaders , NGO ’ s , private sector developers and financiers , leading to an insightful conversation moderated by committee Co-Chairman Mark Florance . A 16-minute summary of the session is available on the
BritCham Singapore podcast and the full session is available on-demand .
Governments in Asia have understandably prioritised national efforts and budgets to the pandemic response . As the region starts to be more able to think beyond the immediate health response , we need to ensure that sustainable infrastructure does not remain down the priority list , and risk delaying development and deployment of mechanisms needed for innovative financing and attract private capital to close the infrastructure financing gap . The panel sought to identify what can be done to ensure resilience and sustainability when meeting the energy and infrastructure demand that is critical to keep up with and drive continued GDP growth in Asia . It recognised that this type of investment was shown to have more economic and job growth response than brown ( carbon intensive ) investment , so made economic sense . This region is at a very different place to the West with energy capacity yet to meet demand . We examined whether ASEAN could adapt initiatives at scale from the UK and India and the key priorities the UK government is driving at COP26 and in the region .
The session provided insights from the British High Commission , Singapore government , the private sector , NGO and finance communities .
Top left to bottom right :
• Tom Moody , Regional Director SE Asia , Climate and Energy of UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office
• Tim Rockell , Chair , BritCham Energy & Utilities Committee
• Mark Florance , Co-Chair , BritCham Energy and Utilities Committee ; and Investment Committee , Climate Investor One Fund , Climate Investor Two Fund ( Session Moderator )
• William Hudson , Head of Southeast Asia , The Carbon Trust
• Ted Low , Chief Operating Officer , Clifford Capital Pte . Ltd
• Wu Lawrence , Co-Founder , Sunseap Group
• Nitin Prasad , Chairman , Shell Companies in India
• Kow Juan Tiang , Deputy Executive Director , Infrastructure Asia
• Sabeena Nayyar , British Chamber of Commerce
COMMITTEE CONTENT
SCALING UP INVESTMENTS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA ' S SUSTAINABLE INFRASTRUCTURE