On 16 March 2026, ACI hosted a webinar themed “Mapping ASEAN’s Clean Power: What 218 Projects Say About Cost Competitiveness”. This webinar was organised as part of the ACI Data and Policy Analytics Seminar Series. The webinar explored the cost-competitiveness of ASEAN countries in clean energy production. It showcased ACI’s innovative methodology in using project-level CAPEX data to calculate Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE), construction of a clean energy competitiveness index to quantify the impact of underlying factors that influence LCOE, and the analysis’ relevance to regional power trade agreements.
The necessity of evaluating clean power generation costs:
Yijia Huang opened the webinar by showing that clean power is now central to ASEAN’s economic strategy, driven by renewable expansion, green regulation, and rising demand from firms seeking cleaner supply chains. This is fuelling strong private green investment, especially in the power sector. Though there has been progress in adopting renewable power, their potential remained largely untapped. Given such potential is distributed unevenly, regional electricity trade and power integration especially important, as they can help countries use their renewable power generation strengths more efficiently. The study therefore examines which low-carbon electricity options are most cost-effective across ASEAN, using project, capacity, geolocation, and policy data from Business Monitor International (BMI), Global Energy Monitor (GEM), and the Climate Policy Databases.
The cost of clean energy production in ASEAN:
Parag Dass presented how the study estimates ASEAN countries’ LCOE by combining BMI project-level CAPEX data with regional assumptions for discount rates and capacity factors. CAPEX emerges as the main source of variation in clean energy LCOE, in comparison with fossil fuel technologies. When controlling for size, CAPEX has generally fallen over time, pointing to improving clean-energy competitiveness across technologies in many ASEAN countries. Hydropower emerges as the cheapest clean technology in the region, followed by solar PV, onshore wind, and offshore wind. The analysis identifies Sarawak hydropower as the region’s most cost-competitive clean power source, and uses this insight to assess whether regional power trade is aligned with the lowest-cost opportunities, in Sarawak and beyond.
Index of underlying factors influencing clean energy production costs in ASEAN:
Bowen Yan presented the study’s comparative index of the underlying factors shaping clean-power costs across ASEAN. The index identifies the main long-run drivers of clean-power costs in the region, including policy support, installed capacity, input costs, and geographic conditions. Using a global regression, the study estimates how strongly each factor affects LCOE and then applies those weights to ASEAN countries to generate predicted cost scores, which are standardised into a comparative index. Installed capacity emerges as an important cost-decreasing driver, showing that learning-by-doing is central to improving cost competitiveness over time. While all ASEAN countries are becoming more competitive, Vietnam stands out as the regional leader on this index because of its rapid expansion in clean-energy installed capacity over the past years.
Key Highlights:
1. Uneven distribution of renewables potential inspires power sector integration: regional power unlocks connecting low-cost clean power in leading countries with demand across the region.
2. Current LCOE calculations show clear technology-country advantages: hydropower leads (Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam), followed by solar PV (Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam), onshore wind (Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand), and offshore wind (Vietnam).
3. Future competitiveness index emphasises scale and integration: higher installed capacity lowers costs, and upcoming projects are likely to further reduce LCOE while expanding opportunities for cross-border clean power trade.
By Parag, DASS, HUANG, Yijia and YAN, Bowen
ACI Perspectives 