Findings

There is abundant potential for land-based wind and solar PV development in Southeast Asia at a range of generation costs. Under the Moderate Technical Potential Scenario:

Potential solar PV capacity exceeds 41 TW (or 59,386 TWh annually), with an LCOE from $64 to $246 USD/MWh across the region; and
Potential wind capacity exceeds 1.8 TW (or 3,159 TWh annually) with an LCOE from $42 to $221 USD/MWh.

The available potential and costs vary between countries as a result of a wide range of factors, including resource quality (solar PV and wind capacity factors), country-specific economics (such as inflation rates, interest rates, and tax rates, among others), and techno-economic assumptions (such as installed and fixed O&M costs).

Results show variations in the cost of generation and available capacity when considering additional technical potential scenarios (Relaxed and Restrictive Scenarios) with alternative land-use constraints for solar PV and wind development in the region.

High-quality renewable resources are not evenly distributed across the region. Of note are limitations in wind resource availability across the region given current wind resource data and technology assumptions. Significant areas are excluded in this study due to lower-quality wind resources (capacity factors less than 15% for wind) that would not typically be appealing for commercial development. This significantly limits the potential wind capacity available at lower generation costs in countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. The estimated capacity available in these countries may change with new wind turbine generation technology assumptions (such as greater hub heights) and improved resource quality data.

Using a spatial approach, near-term opportunities for renewables can be assessed in the region to support national and regional renewable energy targets. As an example, total solar PV potential within 20 km of the transmission system in Cambodia exceeded 2 TW (or 3,107 TWh annually), and LCOE ranged from approximately $69 to $105 USD/MWh. This analysis could be expanded for solar PV and wind in other countries of the region with geospatial data on transmission systems or other complementary datasets.

Generation costs are sensitive to a number of different factors that could be the focus of future policy interventions to support the scale-up of solar PV and wind in the region through increased competitiveness.

This work explored sensitivities to:

Installed costs
Fixed O&M costs
Debt fractions
Depreciation schedules
Discount rates

LCOEs showed the largest sensitivities to the installed costs and discount rates for all countries. The assumed debt fraction could also significantly impact the estimated LCOE for both solar PV and wind.

Potential opportunities and barriers for solar PV and wind development in the countries of the region can be identified from this analysis of the cost of generation. The opportunities summarized in Table 3 represent potential solar PV and wind capacity (and suitable land area) available in each country with an LCOE of less than $105 USD/MWh.

**Table 3. Opportunities and Barriers for Renewable Energy Development across Southeast Asia**
Country	Potential Opportunities¹ LCOE of Less Than $150 USD/MWh		Potential Barriers²
Country	Solar PV Capacity (GW) (suitable land area [km²])	Wind Capacity (GW) (suitable land area [km²])	Potential Barriers²
Brunei	16 GW (431 km²)	0.02 GW (6 km²)	Lower-quality wind resources given currently available technologies (and data) Potentially high installed solar PV and wind costs³ Limited suitable land area for wind and solar development
Burma	7,717 GW (214,347 km²)	482 GW (160,564 km²)	Potentially high installed wind costs³
Cambodia	3,198 GW (88,830 km²)	69 GW (23,082 km²)	Potentially high installed wind costs³
Indonesia	1,052 GW (29,228 km²)	50 GW (16,551 km²)	Lower-quality wind resources given currently available technologies (and data) High installed solar PV and wind costs
Lao PDR	1,278 GW (35,496 km²)	13 GW (4,344 km²)	Potentially high installed wind costs³ Limited or no existing utility-scale wind development
Malaysia	1,965 GW (54,575 km²)	2 GW (526 km²)	Lower-quality wind resources given currently available technologies (and data) Potentially high installed wind costs³ Limited or no existing utility-scale wind development
Philippines	1,910 GW (53,062 km²)	217 GW (72,337 km²)	High installed solar PV and wind costs
Singapore	2 GW (60 km²)	0.02 GW (7 km²)	Lower-quality wind resources given currently available technologies (and data) Limited suitable land area for wind and solar development Potentially high installed wind costs³ Limited or no existing utility-scale wind development
Thailand	10,538 GW (292,713 km²)	239 GW (79,718 km²)	High installed wind costs
Vietnam	2,847 GW (79,069 km²)	311 GW (103,591 km²)	High O&M cost for wind and solar PV

1. Values from estimated Moderate Technical Potential Scenario. The estimated LCOE for solar PV generation ranged from S99 to $200 USD/MWh, and the LCOE for wind generation was approximately $150 USD/MWh in 2018 in Southeast Asia.
2. Barriers based on the wind and solar PV resource data and techno-economic assumptions used in this analysis.
3. Country data on wind generation costs were not available for this analysis. Regional averages for installed and O&M costs were assumed in the absence of country data. The installed and O&M costs assumed for each country are shown in Appendix A-1.3.1 of the full report.
4. Installed and O&M costs assumed for each country are shown in Appendix A-1.3.1 of the full report.

Future Work

The technical potential analyses that form the basis of this work could be improved for future analyses.

Policymakers, planners, developers, and other actors in the region are invited to further explore solar PV and wind generation costs for countries in Southeast Asia with the Cost of Energy Mapping Tool on RE Data Explorer ( Box 1).
With the Cost of Energy Mapping Tool, users can construct additional scenarios to estimate the cost of generation in countries across Southeast Asia.
Users can visually explore the spatial results from these scenarios online or download the results for additional analyses. Users can also replicate the scenarios and download all of the results that were presented in this work.

This work relied upon a common, representative set of technical potential scenarios for the region as well as global, publicly available land-use data sets. Future analysis could consider technical potential scenarios that reflect specific country land-use designations (where renewables can and cannot be developed) and updated, high-resolution land-use data.

Improvements to the LCOE estimates can also be made for future analyses. The LCOE estimates in this work reflect currently available default, national economic, and techno-economic assumptions and data (see Appendix A-1.3 of the full report).

Current assumptions at the national scale will not be representative of all present and future projects; however, they allow for a high-level estimate of LCOE. To further refine LCOE estimates and support decision-making, economic, and techno-economic assumptions (such as installed and O&M costs) should be updated when data become available. Additionally, future work could also explore regional cost multipliers that would account for intra-country variations in installed and O&M costs for each country because costs in areas near population centers and existing systems likely differ from those in more remote rural areas, for example.

This work shows broad trends in LCOE for the region, but:

It does not attempt to calculate the actual cost of generation at any location.
Results are not definitive and should not be used for specific project siting or be adopted into policies without further detailed analyses.
Further appropriate studies, long-term data measurement, and validation activities are essential to confirm actual resource availability or project performance for any policy, planning, or project development.