Supporting Energy Efficiency and Conservation (EE&C) Programme Area of ASEAN Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation (APAEC), ASEAN Centre for Energy (ACE) has been collaborating with United Nations Environment Programme – United for Efficiency (UNEP- U4E) for more than a decade to coordinate the global activities with the regional initiatives. One of the implementations of ACE-UNEP U4E partnership is a virtual workshop titled “Realizing the Shift of ASEAN’s Markets to Energy-Efficient and Climate Friendly Appliances” on 5 April 2021.

Dr Zulfikar Yurnaidi, Senior Research Analyst of ASEAN Climate Change and Energy Project (ACCEPT), participated as the moderator of the second session of the workshop. The event, which was part of the 25th EE&C Sub-sector Network (SSN) and Associated Meetings, was opened by welcome remarks from Mr. Abdul Salam bin Hj. Abdul Wahab, Head of Sustainable Energy Division, Ministry of Energy, Brunei Darussalam.

The first session focused on the development of the regional Product Registration System (PRS). The regional PRS is critical to such as create a database with product information, monitor products that are sold in market, provide information on environmental impact of the products for key stakeholders, foster economic development, and encourage consumers to choose energy-efficient products. The already established national PRS are to be connected with the regional PRS via Application Programming Interface (API), which provides the benefits of Automation, Efficiency, Reliability, and Unity.

The second session, which was moderated by Zulfikar, discussed about the ACE – UNEP U4E Cooperation Projects on Energy Efficient Lighting and Appliances in the ASEAN Region. The purpose of National Lighting Roadmaps is to provide clear guidelines in adoption of policies to promote the use of efficient lighting product and to achieve the regional harmonisation targets by 2023 for all ASEAN countries. The regional lighting roadmap is based on harmonisation, testing infrastructure and mutual recognition agreements (MRA).

The development of national lighting roadmap originated from the regional roadmap, which has been endorsed by ASEAN Ministers on Energy Meeting (AMEM) in 2019. After series of discussions and revisions, the drafts of national lighting roadmaps of ASEAN countries have been made available for countries review in among them, Thailand through Department of Alternative Energy Development and Efficiency (DEDE) has officially approved the national roadmap, Indonesia has one-on-one discussion and currently in the third version of the draft, Singapore also has already received the third version of the draft.

Session 2 ACE – UNEP U4E Cooperation Projects Energy Efficient Lighting and Appliances in the ASEAN Region moderated by Dr. Zulfikar Yurniadi

The second session also discussed about the new initiative on Modelling of the Impact of Energy Efficient Appliances in ASEAN. Country savings assessments overview aims to give an evidence based for the development of projects to promote energy efficient product on cooling, lighting and equipment. The U4E analysis approach is to estimate total electricity use of each product from 2020-2040 using U4E models by considering 3 scenarios: business as usual (BAU), minimum ambition and high ambition. The second projection is the metrics of unit energy consumption under 3 scenarios of cooling sector with the product of residential refrigerators and room air conditioners. The collaboration with ACE to update the ASEAN analysis with the timeframe from February to May 2021 is currently working on the data update.

Dr Zulfikar then leads a discussion session towards energy efficient lighting and appliances in the ASEAN Region. Mr. Sandy Fajrian shared about the 6th ASEAN Energy Outlook (AEO6) modeling, including demand calculation, as well as findings and potential linkage with UNEP U4E modeling. We still need to know the countries condition based on the data, and then create official statistics, which requires strong engagement. He then wrapped up the session with reviews on data gathering challenge, how to improve it, and encouraged closer collaboration on the national lighting roadmap and the modelling works.

As ACCEPT aims to improve the coherence between energy and climate policies, promotion of energy efficient appliances would be critical to achieve both the regional energy intensity target and national climate commitment.