Coal-fired power plants in Mariveles, Bataan, Philippines, on June 6, 2023.
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According to Ember, a London-based energy think tank, the Philippines' reliance on coal-fired power plants rose 62 percent last year, overtaking China, Indonesia and Poland.
The Philippines was also the most coal-dependent country in Southeast Asia in 2023, as the adoption of renewable power generation remained low. The share of electricity generated from coal in the country rose to 61.9% last year, compared to 59.1% in 2022.
Overall, the country's coal production rose 9.7%, higher than the 4.6% increase in electricity demand, the report said.
“Coal has played an important role in the Philippines' energy security, with many new coal-fired power plants being built in the 1990s to meet growing electricity demand,” Dinita Setyawati, senior electricity policy analyst for Southeast Asia at Ember Climate, told CNBC.
Indonesia and the Philippines are the two countries in Southeast Asia that are most dependent on coal. Their dependence on coal is growing rapidly.
“To this day, there is still a dependency on these coal-fired power stations.”
Indonesia, the world's fifth-largest coal producer, follows closely behind, with the share of electricity generated from coal reaching a new record of 61.8% in 2023.
“Indonesia and the Philippines are the two most coal-dependent countries in Southeast Asia, and their coal dependency is growing rapidly,” the report said, noting a 2% increase in coal dependency in the Southeast Asian region, from 31% in 2022 to 33% last year.
China has taken steps to reduce its reliance on the most polluting fossil fuel for electricity generation, with demand reaching 60.7% in 2023 – lower than India at 75.2% and Poland at 61%. according to Ember.
China, the world's largest coal producer, has made remarkable progress in developing renewable energy. As a result, there has been a slowdown in the rate of emission growth — from an average of 9% per year between 2001 and 2015, to 4.4% per year between 2016 and 2023, the energy think tank said in May that clean electricity accounts for 35% of China's total electricity generation.
Indonesia and the Philippines lag behind in renewable energy sources
Indonesia and the Philippines are still years away from replacing coal as the main source of energy. It is therefore essential to increase the share of renewable energy in the electricity mix.
“Indonesia and the Philippines have seen limited growth in their renewable electricity generation because their wind and solar potential “Available resources remain almost completely unused,” the report said.
Ember noted that wind and solar generation in the Philippines only grew from less than 1 terawatt-hour in 2015 to 3.7 TWh last year. This is significantly slower than growth in the rest of the region, where wind and solar generation grew by 46 TWh from 2015 to 2023 — driven largely by Vietnam, the report said.
“Scaling up renewables should go hand in hand with the slowing down of coal-fired power generation in Indonesia and the Philippines,” Ember's Setyawati told CNBC.
The Indonesian government needs to step up its renewable energy ambitions, she said, and introduce new policies to encourage the development of solar and wind energy.
“For example, incentives for users of solar panels on roofs, relaxation of local content requirements for wind and solar energy producers and government funding for research into solar and wind technology.”
