Renewable Energy in Asia

Asia is in demand for renewable energy and projected to grow. There are opportunities for both large renewable developers and smaller providers of services such as demand-side management and analytics.
At the Asia Clean Energy Summit, Industry leaders message that with such growth, business opportunities are arising across all aspects of the renewable division from procurement and construction services to sensors for data analytics.
In the next ten years, growth in Asia will account for 65 percent of growth in energy consumption worldwide. The push by many Asian governments to improve air quality by switching from coal to gas and renewables is another objective.
With the rise of renewable in the region, utility company will have to respond by working out how to prompt to develop a centralized power plants and to come up with new business models to regionalized power generation.
One of the representatives from Philippines’ largest electricity distributor Meralco, said the growth of renewables would occur “whether we want it or not; the question is how do we make this attractive in a controlled way.”
The Philippines, some 30 percent of its population still lacks access to electricity. There is likely to be a power generation deficit by 2015. “Solar and wind will probably be a big opportunity. And have to consider the power-related challenges such as dispersed islands, typhoons and monsoons.
Optimistic on wider energy sector
Panelists’ also identified other business opportunities in the wider energy sector.
Many islands in the Philippines rely on pricey diesel generator at US$0.40 to $0.50 per kilowatt-hour and conventional centralized power generation would require expensive transmission lines to remote parts of Australia. Renewable energy would be cost-competitive in both places, said panelists.
Other technologies for energy storage, where renewable energy is variable or intermittent, such as wind or solar, to shore up power for later use and storage is needed to smooth out minute-to-minute fluctuations. 
In Singapore one of the Universities is setting up a demonstration micro-grid at the offshore one of their island to integrate wind, solar, and tidal generation with more experimental energy storage and power-to-gas technologies. A test-bed the development and integration of such technologies,
Solar Energy leading to Asia
Director at the International Renewable energy Association said Asia is also leading in the development of solar photovoltaic.
In 2013, China added 13 GW of solar capacity while India added 1 GW – enough to power some 250,000 four-room flats. Other countries to consider rising a new business models are Singapore and Malaysia.
Another stepping-stone for many more business models to come is Solar leasing – where users do not own the panels but leases them from a company that sells them electricity at favorable rates. Others might include crowd-funding, which would function much like a bond that pays interest to retail investors; and a car-leasing model in which the manufacturers themselves lease solar panels and systems.
In Singapore government agencies pay producers a favorable rate for solar energy so that there’s no subsidies or feed-in tariffs, while in the Philippines solar is competitive against expensive diesel generation. The key is to eliminate feed-in tariffs and let renewables be cost-competitive on their own.
Governments can do to encourage the growth of renewable energy and give incentives and policies.
Too often, fossil fuels are subsidized and electricity prices regulated so there is no push for users to transition to renewables.