Clean Energy Manufacturing in Southeast Asia

This Capstone project provided research and analysis for the International Energy Agency (IEA) on clean energy technology manufacturing in Southeast Asia. This research will be used to inform the preparation of the IEA's forthcoming Energy Technology Perspectives 2026 report. The IEA is an intergovernmental organization that provides modeling on the energy sector, with a particular focus on supporting the global clean energy transition.

The project assessed the state of five clean energy technologies (solar PV, wind, batteries, electric vehicles, and transformers) across five countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam). Research was organized around seven different workstreams. These covered the outlook for the ASEAN region as well as country-level policy frameworks, manufacturing pipelines, FDI flows, skills and workforce gaps, prices, and industrial synergies with existing industries.

Several cross-cutting insights emerged. Across solar PV, all five countries developed export-oriented module and panel assembly sectors, with only select countries having strong capabilities in the upstream mining and cell manufacturing parts of the supply chain. Wind manufacturing is nascent across the region, with only Malaysia and Vietnam at early development stages. Battery manufacturing and assembly is present in most countries but concentrated in midstream and downstream assembly. For EVs, Thailand and Vietnam are the most advanced in component manufacturing. Thailand and the Philippines are the only countries with well-established transformer industries. 

The project delivered two outputs: a high-level insights presentation synthesizing key findings and a detailed Excel workbook providing structured, uniform data across all seven workstreams for each country.