Speaker 1: High Mark quiz question. Do you know how many people
Speaker 1: were on this planet the year you were born? This planet? Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not that old, so I don't know. They're about
Speaker 1: seven and something now, seven point something billion now, so
Speaker 1: let's just say there are six There are seven point
Speaker 1: seven billion people on the planet now, and I looked
Speaker 1: it up. The year you were born there were four
Speaker 1: point four billion people and no listeners, you do not
Speaker 1: get to know our exact ages, but I'm roughly the
Speaker 1: same ages Mark. So let's continue talking about population today
Speaker 1: in light of the topic we're going to discuss, which
Speaker 1: is Asia. So there were four point four billion people
Speaker 1: on the planet when Mark was born, which is incidentally
Speaker 1: the same number that lived in Asia, just in Asia.
Speaker 1: That was almost half a decade ago, so there are
Speaker 1: actually more people living just to Asia then there were
Speaker 1: everywhere on the globe the year Mark was born. Huh okay,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of people. And uh yeah, if you
Speaker 1: feel like back calculating, you know, my age based on
Speaker 1: that number, go ahead. I won't be offended. But when
Speaker 1: I think about that in the context of ben If,
Speaker 1: it makes a lot of sense. So if you look
Speaker 1: at our twenty nineteen electric vehicle forecast, about six of
Speaker 1: new vehicles sold in twenty nineteen are being sold just
Speaker 1: in China. That's just one country. Or our new Energy
Speaker 1: outlook for twenty nine of clean energy investment between today
Speaker 1: and it will be in Asia. So with over half
Speaker 1: of global greenhouse gas emissions coming from Asia, it is
Speaker 1: also a big part of the solution, and that's important
Speaker 1: context for the podcast today where we'll be interviewing our
Speaker 1: colleague Justin Wu, who is based out of our Tokyo
Speaker 1: office and is the head of Asia Pacific for ben IF.
Speaker 1: We wanted to talk to him about some of the
Speaker 1: trends that he's seeing in the region, but we realized
Speaker 1: this was a pretty lofty task, so we instead asked
Speaker 1: him to give us a few case study countries just
Speaker 1: to narrow it down a bit. He chose China, India,
Speaker 1: and Japan. So in today's episode of Switch Down, we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about a few research notes that we've recently done.
Speaker 1: First is the two aged twenty nineteen China Market Outlook.
Speaker 1: Second or next is a note titled Japan to take
Speaker 1: on Plastics but it's not quite in the bag, and
Speaker 1: the New Energy Outlook twenty nineteen section on India. You
Speaker 1: can find all three of these notes on the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: terminal at BNF Go or on BNF dot Com or
Speaker 1: on the BNF mobile app. If you want to know
Speaker 1: more about BNS perspectives on Asia and you're not one
Speaker 1: of our clients attending our summit in Shanghai at the
Speaker 1: beginning of December, you'll be able to see a selection
Speaker 1: of videos from our speakers on our public website about
Speaker 1: dot BNF dot com forwards last summit forward slash Shanghai
Speaker 1: and a quick reminder, BENIF does not provide an investment
Speaker 1: or strategy advice, and you can hear a full disclaimer
Speaker 1: again in the show. Hi, justin thank you for joining
Speaker 1: us today. Hid great to be here. Not all of
Speaker 1: our guests before they come on the show get a challenge,
Speaker 1: but you did get a challenge, and the challenge that
Speaker 1: we pose to you was to represent some of the
Speaker 1: changing dynamics in the industry that we cover in Asia
Speaker 1: and to select three countries and ultimately three binn F
Speaker 1: research notes that would explain that. Can you tell us
Speaker 1: what those three countries are and why you picked them? Well,
Speaker 1: thank you Dana for for acknowledging the challenge, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I do. I do get this question a lot. Pick
Speaker 1: three countries or three things to represent a region which
Speaker 1: is Asia, which is you know, more than two thirds
Speaker 1: of the world and and uh significant part of the
Speaker 1: two thirds of the population, two thirds of the economy,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So I took the easy route. I picked
Speaker 1: three countries, and I picked China, Japan, and India. Essentially
Speaker 1: they're the three largest economies in Asia. So it's important
Speaker 1: to look at them because obviously what happens in them
Speaker 1: is going to have a major impact on how we
Speaker 1: think about climate change or how we experience climate change
Speaker 1: in the future. And often we have to acknowledge that
Speaker 1: even though things are moving in the right direction in
Speaker 1: some of these countries with regards to growing a earness
Speaker 1: for sustainability or policy changes that that sort of help
Speaker 1: to cap emissions, etcetera, we still have a long way
Speaker 1: to go, and there's certainly a lot of hurdles still
Speaker 1: to overcome in these places. Maybe jump into the first one.
Speaker 1: Let's start with Japan. There's a story to be had there.
Speaker 1: So one thing I didn't know was that Japan uses
Speaker 1: is the second biggest consumer of is it single use
Speaker 1: or all plastics. All plastics yea, And yeah, I'm I
Speaker 1: moved um actually moved to Tokyo last year, so that
Speaker 1: this sort of issue became really fun and center to me.
Speaker 1: You know, what was really funny is actually when one
Speaker 1: thing I know is after I moved there was that
Speaker 1: I had to sort my trash and they really detailed
Speaker 1: in manner essentially, you know, there are differences between different
Speaker 1: types of plastics, things that could be incinerated and things
Speaker 1: that could not be incenterated. So you don't want to
Speaker 1: apparently burn batteries because they blow up or something like that.
Speaker 1: But anyway, but what occurs to me is that actually
Speaker 1: Japan is a country that actually takes recycling extremely seriously,
Speaker 1: but as the note points, as we looked at it
Speaker 1: and from a research perspective, and actually is the second
Speaker 1: largest per capitive user of plastics in the world after
Speaker 1: the US. And then you know, this year was a
Speaker 1: very special year in Japan because it hosted the G
Speaker 1: twenty conference in Osaka in June, and ahead of that,
Speaker 1: the Japanese government, along with many of the companies, wanted
Speaker 1: to make a show for corporate sustainability. So this manifested
Speaker 1: itself in a number of ways. One was the Task
Speaker 1: Force for a Climate Related Financial Disclosures essentially Japan. There's
Speaker 1: over almost two hundred companies in Japan that have become
Speaker 1: a member of the TCFD, meaning that they will voluntarily
Speaker 1: disclose their business risks and opportunities with regards to what
Speaker 1: might happen if the climate change is the risk associate
Speaker 1: with climate change um, and also what they're going to
Speaker 1: do about it essentially, are they gonna help sort of
Speaker 1: mitigate climate change, etcetera. And then there's you know, two
Speaker 1: other indicators that happened was one was around sort of
Speaker 1: twenty five companies also joined the r E one hundred,
Speaker 1: which is a group that pledges to use renewable energy
Speaker 1: for its operations by a certain year. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: the other one is what we just discussed, which is
Speaker 1: this plastic spand but I think, you know, I think
Speaker 1: one of the issues is that this is all great
Speaker 1: that we see all this progress this year, but I
Speaker 1: think still Japan has a long way to go. And
Speaker 1: essentially all these companies made these pledges and there's really
Speaker 1: sort of high hopes for these things. Um. But then
Speaker 1: it's it's a bit like Okay, what do we do
Speaker 1: now the motivation for these commitments. Do you feel that
Speaker 1: it is predominantly coming from government incentives and will end
Speaker 1: up with regulation. Is it coming from the companies themselves
Speaker 1: and wanting to attract customers in capital? Where is the
Speaker 1: Japanese motivation from your perspective. That's a really good question.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think in this case we can say
Speaker 1: that it is coming. Um, at least this year, a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff is coming from government. The government, UM.
Speaker 1: You know, the prime minister, Prime Minister Abbe is actually
Speaker 1: leading or pushing some of these efforts to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: The government is doing us because it wants to put
Speaker 1: on a good sort of good face ahead before the
Speaker 1: G twenty meeting. UM. And also Japanese companies, I think
Speaker 1: realized that you know, many of them are pretty sophisticated,
Speaker 1: that pretty uh businesses around the world. They have a
Speaker 1: lot of operations in Europe where you know, this conversation
Speaker 1: is further event. So they realized that actually they are
Speaker 1: falling behind their some of their global counterparts, uh, and
Speaker 1: they need to do something about it. And there are
Speaker 1: you know, there's some evidence to show that Japanese consumers
Speaker 1: are sort of waking up to this, but still it's
Speaker 1: you know, being in London last two days, I've noticed
Speaker 1: that actually, you know, we you know, we don't really
Speaker 1: use a single use straws or a lot. It's gonna
Speaker 1: use plastics now and sort of coffee shops and supermarkets
Speaker 1: here that's not the case in Japan. Um, when you
Speaker 1: go buy something, you still get pretty a lot of
Speaker 1: packaging and plastics, whether you ask for it or not.
Speaker 1: So the interest levels high and perhaps there are some
Speaker 1: easy gains to be made, but still a long way
Speaker 1: to go in terms of of starting point to finish line.
Speaker 1: Let's say. Yeah, And you know, I think one observation
Speaker 1: I made and this is sort of my my personal
Speaker 1: view on this. And you know, if if you live
Speaker 1: in Japan, it's, um, the environment is really really nice, right,
Speaker 1: there's not air pollution is not a problem. The waste
Speaker 1: is mostly incinerated. Actually more than half of all the
Speaker 1: plastics in Japan that gets discarded are incinerated, so you
Speaker 1: don't have these massive landfills and things like that. It's
Speaker 1: that's much higher than global average. So in some ways
Speaker 1: you live in a very nice environment. Uh, and you
Speaker 1: don't really realize that sort of waste is a major
Speaker 1: issue because you don't see it. The streets are really
Speaker 1: really clean, and there's no you don't see sort of
Speaker 1: evening news stories about plastic in the ocean and things
Speaker 1: like that. Um and you don't experience for air pollution.
Speaker 1: I used to live in China and then air pollution
Speaker 1: was a major visible issue and the government had to
Speaker 1: do something about immediately. So I don't want to use
Speaker 1: the word complacent, but it is. It is not there right,
Speaker 1: and I think actually that makes it a little bit
Speaker 1: more difficult sometimes to uh, to get well, to feel
Speaker 1: sense of urgency towards issues like this. I'm glad you
Speaker 1: brought China up because that is another country that you listed,
Speaker 1: and I think you really can't talk about energy or
Speaker 1: Asia without talking about China. They have come a long
Speaker 1: way in the last few years. And I think our
Speaker 1: forecasts and I'm looking specifically at our H two twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen China market outlooks, so we're looking out into the
Speaker 1: future there. The forecast we're showing is a lot more
Speaker 1: renewable energy in their future. So can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about where we see China now and where
Speaker 1: we see China, going sure, I mean, we really can't
Speaker 1: talk about a lot of things. He's he's not thinking
Speaker 1: about China, right, It's it's sort of the big, the
Speaker 1: elephant in the room and on a lot of things. UM.
Speaker 1: One thing we know is about China is that there
Speaker 1: is a first of all, there is a slowdown in
Speaker 1: China in in sort of the first half of this
Speaker 1: this year. When we say slow down, we mean a
Speaker 1: number of things. One is that the GDP growth rate
Speaker 1: is the lowest in twenty seven years. You know, some
Speaker 1: of that has to do with the trade issues that
Speaker 1: are ongoing and other factors, but more relevant to what
Speaker 1: we look at as well, UM power demand growth is
Speaker 1: the lowest in a number of years as well. Still
Speaker 1: growing pretty pretty robustly, but that's slowing. And then another
Speaker 1: sort of shocking number we noticed was that in the
Speaker 1: last fourteen months, UM there's been negative growth in car sales,
Speaker 1: specifically sort of internal combustion engine car sales. And this
Speaker 1: is the world's obviously the world's largest auto market. So
Speaker 1: that's a that's a pretty surprising statistic for a lot
Speaker 1: of people to get their heads around. But while all
Speaker 1: this happening, you might say Okay, if if, if, sort
Speaker 1: of there's some economic headwinds in China right now, does
Speaker 1: it mean the clean energy transition or all the other
Speaker 1: things that we talked about before in China, is all
Speaker 1: of that going to be derailed or slowed in some way?
Speaker 1: And the good news is that we don't. We don't
Speaker 1: see that. So we see that for instance, even though
Speaker 1: car sales overall have been down for over a year,
Speaker 1: electric vehicle sales are still growing and we expect actually
Speaker 1: something like one point eight million electric vehicles to be
Speaker 1: sold in China this year versus a million last Year's
Speaker 1: almost a doubling of of of that. We see that
Speaker 1: clean energy capacity UH is still increasing um, not as
Speaker 1: you know, not as much as before, but still still increasing,
Speaker 1: and that um in some ways that now eight percent
Speaker 1: of China's electricity comes from wind and solar, which is
Speaker 1: not an insignificant number, and you know, we think that
Speaker 1: might cross the threshold of ten percent at some point
Speaker 1: within the next year. So that's that would be a
Speaker 1: really interesting milestone I think for UH, you know the
Speaker 1: world's largest electricity system, which is a story not only
Speaker 1: just about China supplying energy to Chinese citizens, but also
Speaker 1: from a scope three emission standpoint. So if you're thinking
Speaker 1: about the emissions that are associated with all of the
Speaker 1: materials that then go into things that are manufactured in
Speaker 1: other parts of the world, a great number of them
Speaker 1: are manufactured in China. So I suppose that this is
Speaker 1: really a global story in addition to it being their story.
Speaker 1: So my question ultimately about China is that you would
Speaker 1: think if renewable energy is really going to take off,
Speaker 1: it's a policy decision. Do you see that reinforced or
Speaker 1: do you see a lot of companies looking at just
Speaker 1: the economics as you do in some places like the
Speaker 1: U S. Or you see power purchase agreements and saying well,
Speaker 1: actually this is just the cheapest form of energy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course. I mean it is all policies driven, right,
Speaker 1: and the government in China, both the central government and
Speaker 1: local governments, they all play a pretty important role in
Speaker 1: all of this um in some ways. If if you
Speaker 1: look at UM policy in China, it's um you know,
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of it was needed at the beginning
Speaker 1: to to spur all this growth in both renewable energy
Speaker 1: capacity that's being deployed in the country and also in
Speaker 1: all the manufacturing that took place, and you know that
Speaker 1: manufact that sort of scalpe and manufacturing capacity is what
Speaker 1: in some ways helped us get to really cheap renewable
Speaker 1: energy today for um, almost everywhere in the world. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so so policy still plays a very very very important role.
Speaker 1: What's interesting in China is that actually for years, what
Speaker 1: the government has been trying to do is build a
Speaker 1: so called zero subsidy renewable energy. Now that's a slightly
Speaker 1: a miss a misnomer. Doesn't mean that these are um,
Speaker 1: what we call merchant projects in other countries. In other words,
Speaker 1: you you you kind of um, you leave a renewable
Speaker 1: energy project to the whims of the power market, right
Speaker 1: without giving it any subsidies. Essentially, what it what it
Speaker 1: means is that, uh, they want to build wind and
Speaker 1: solar projects UM at the same price as and give
Speaker 1: it the same price as as a coal fire power
Speaker 1: plant essentially, which is a regulated price. UM. And of course,
Speaker 1: thanks to UM you know, cheaper and cheaper equipment and
Speaker 1: and sort of lower costs of all these projects. UM,
Speaker 1: the government is getting very very close to this goal.
Speaker 1: So we have more and more projects now that are
Speaker 1: being built without additional subsidies, um so, and that that's helped,
Speaker 1: but we have to remember it's still a very long
Speaker 1: way to go, right, Um it's and you know there's
Speaker 1: a figure where um, there's over something like thirty two
Speaker 1: billion dollars of subsidies being old to renewable energy projects
Speaker 1: in China because of you know, the subsidies used to
Speaker 1: be so generous for these these projects. There's a huge backlog.
Speaker 1: So if we want to see China sort of complete
Speaker 1: this transformation and build more and more renewable energy projects,
Speaker 1: that obviously cannot subsidize them at that kind of a
Speaker 1: rate has to find a different way. But it's gonna
Speaker 1: take time. It's gonna take time to steer the ship around.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't the returns be difficult at that rate too, because
Speaker 1: the cold plans are running at a higher capacity factor
Speaker 1: more of the time as opposed to win or solar.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah. I mean what what's interesting is that
Speaker 1: I think one of the barriers obviously keeping um, preventing
Speaker 1: renewable energy from let's say, achieving its potential is that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, we have to keep the lights on, right,
Speaker 1: you have to run these co fire power plants and
Speaker 1: you have to run them met a certain rate otherwise
Speaker 1: they become uncompetitive, or that the machinery suffered from breakdowns
Speaker 1: and all this other stuff. But I think now actually
Speaker 1: we see some evidence at least in the beginning of
Speaker 1: the year that UM renewable energy is getting more priority
Speaker 1: to dispatch in some cases, and and actually co fired
Speaker 1: power plants are, you know, being scaled down a little bit.
Speaker 1: So that's that's a very good sign. But you know,
Speaker 1: we have to remember, I think even though some parts
Speaker 1: of the world now we talk about sort of net
Speaker 1: zero missions were shutting down all the coal fire power plants,
Speaker 1: China still building new copier power plants. Actually, in our
Speaker 1: sort of UM forecasts, we expect China build its last
Speaker 1: coal fire power plant in something in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: so it's still many years ago. And of the coal
Speaker 1: fire power plants in China today, UM, it's a very
Speaker 1: young fleet. So them were built in less than ten
Speaker 1: years as it goes, so they still have a long
Speaker 1: way to go. So it shows you that even though
Speaker 1: renewable energy is ramping up, and you can kind of
Speaker 1: create a lot of positive headlines around that story, there's
Speaker 1: still you know, there's still a lot of coal, and
Speaker 1: we still will still take time to get through all
Speaker 1: of that. Just before this interview being published, a research
Speaker 1: note that said, you know, I know, I know, we're
Speaker 1: getting out of Japan, China, and India here, but Indonesia
Speaker 1: for now, coal remains king where the government is pushing
Speaker 1: a kind of a coal agenda. But it seems from
Speaker 1: our modeling that the coal is being pushed out of
Speaker 1: the out of the market earlier than expected in Indonesia.
Speaker 1: So there seems to be signs that coal is kind
Speaker 1: of on the way out in Asia, but still gonna
Speaker 1: be around for quite a while, That's right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean we we always say that it is it is
Speaker 1: gonna be on its way out. Obviously, renewable energy will
Speaker 1: be competitive against cole Eventually these plans will shut down.
Speaker 1: It's it's always a question of of when, not not
Speaker 1: so much if. But I think the caution I would
Speaker 1: I would bring to this is that the wind could
Speaker 1: be actually quite a while longer um and and Indonesia
Speaker 1: is one of these cases. Obviously, it has a lot
Speaker 1: of domestic sources of coal that it wants to deploy India,
Speaker 1: which I think we'll talk about in a moment. Is
Speaker 1: another one of these cases where there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of coal and it's going to take time before that
Speaker 1: that's all going to sort of be be sort of
Speaker 1: shut down or or decommissioned. Let's do India, Let's move
Speaker 1: that direction right now, because I think that's a very
Speaker 1: different story than the other two countries, where you're seeing citizens,
Speaker 1: economic incentives, companies all kind of pushing in the same direction.
Speaker 1: India is really interesting because there's just a lot of
Speaker 1: different things all kind of happening concurrently, and maybe it's
Speaker 1: a little more difficult to figure out what the direction
Speaker 1: of travel is. Absolutely, I mean, if we if we
Speaker 1: just sort of take a step back and think about India, right,
Speaker 1: it wasn't it wasn't so long ago that India, or
Speaker 1: the Indian government rather would advance the argument that, look,
Speaker 1: climate change is a problem for rich countries to deal with.
Speaker 1: We are a developing country. We still need to develop
Speaker 1: and and and sort of lift millions and million, hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of people out of poverty. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: going to require emissions, right, and industry and and and
Speaker 1: coal and all this other stuff. Um. But of course
Speaker 1: you know, we we see now that actually um, even
Speaker 1: that sort of narrative is starting to shift in in India. UH,
Speaker 1: that the government is becoming, you know, open to the
Speaker 1: idea of of of talking about sort of climate change
Speaker 1: and doing something to its emissions. The point about India
Speaker 1: is that actually, UM, one sort of interesting or perhaps
Speaker 1: shocking number that we notice is that, uh, in about
Speaker 1: less than ten years time, India is going to overtake
Speaker 1: the US and become the world's second largest emitter of
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide. So, you know, we need to take a
Speaker 1: closer look at India. And that's because of growth in
Speaker 1: India or reducing demand in US. It's it's a little
Speaker 1: bit of both. Obviously, the US is becoming cleaner in
Speaker 1: the sense from a carbon emissions perspective because of all
Speaker 1: the gas that's that's coming online. But yeah, and also
Speaker 1: it's growth in India of course, right India, India's economy
Speaker 1: is let's remember, India's economy is about half the size
Speaker 1: of Japan UM and it has about six times the
Speaker 1: population of that of Japan. We talked about this in
Speaker 1: our road Fuels episode not too long ago. We noticed
Speaker 1: that a big part of the emissions from transport will
Speaker 1: come from India. And then your future because of the
Speaker 1: growth in transportation from private vehicles and and hired vehicles
Speaker 1: and deliveries. So is that where the missions are coming
Speaker 1: from or is it mostly coming from stationary sources like coal.
Speaker 1: It's it's gonna be both. Um. You know, we have
Speaker 1: to remember the India has a lot of room to
Speaker 1: grow almost everywhere, right if you if you if you
Speaker 1: learn at all the sectors transport, industry, agriculture, even power
Speaker 1: gen and you know, everything, India will have room to grow.
Speaker 1: A lot of it, yes, will be you know, we
Speaker 1: are talking actually about um in this case about power
Speaker 1: sector emissions. Um. So yes, it is a lot of
Speaker 1: that growth will be coming from the new co fire
Speaker 1: power plants that are being built in India. Simply, Um,
Speaker 1: there's not enough electricity in India for its population or
Speaker 1: for its economy to grow at the moment, so you
Speaker 1: will result in a lot of new building of co
Speaker 1: fire power plants. But the only thing I want to
Speaker 1: say is actually this might be a little bit of
Speaker 1: a doom and story about India, but actually there are
Speaker 1: signs of hope as well. Right. One thing is that
Speaker 1: you know, India has some of the most competitive wind
Speaker 1: and solar auctions in the world, so it helps. It
Speaker 1: achieved very low prices for solar projects, so some of
Speaker 1: the solar projects built are actually very competitive, even though
Speaker 1: some of them do run into problems here and there,
Speaker 1: but nevertheless, it's it's a good it's a good thing.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, the Indian government, it's also very ambitious.
Speaker 1: Um recently it's sort of well after Moody was sort
Speaker 1: of returned for his second term, they've announced some fairly
Speaker 1: ambitious goals towards electrification of of of transport, whether it's
Speaker 1: sort of the two or three wheelers, the tuk tuks
Speaker 1: if you will, that you see on the on the
Speaker 1: roads in in in Indian cities, or towards some of
Speaker 1: the heavier stuff as well. So there is ambition to
Speaker 1: do something about it. But again, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: a case of um, it still has a wayte to go,
Speaker 1: and the question is is it gonna be too little
Speaker 1: too late? Right? Can the world sort of afford India
Speaker 1: to get rich before it gets clean? And you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's an age old sort of debate. But obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, we're hopeful in the sense at least it's
Speaker 1: the government and companies that are actually open to considering
Speaker 1: solutions and looking at new things. What's stopping India from
Speaker 1: and I know we don't love this term, but leap
Speaker 1: frogging some of the traditional high carbon energy sources of
Speaker 1: the Industrial revolution and maybe skipping a little bit to
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that has a lower cost associated
Speaker 1: with it in other regions apparently not so cheap there. Look,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that is a great hope of
Speaker 1: many people, right that in the sense that for countries today,
Speaker 1: any developing country today, it doesn't have to do things
Speaker 1: that are countries did a hundred years ago. There are
Speaker 1: other ways to do it. A certain extent, that is true.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think in the India itself there is
Speaker 1: a debate about that as well. For instance, there's a
Speaker 1: debate about whether you know that the so called China
Speaker 1: development model is the right one, right, whether Indians would
Speaker 1: go for heavy manufacturing um And if it does do that,
Speaker 1: obviously it's consumption of fossil fuels will increase significantly and
Speaker 1: its emissions and increased significantly. So is that the way
Speaker 1: to go or should it sort of leaf from that
Speaker 1: and look for high tech and new technologies and and
Speaker 1: things that are less sort of energy intensive. So there's
Speaker 1: a debate about that. But but you know, I think
Speaker 1: it's it's not that simple obviously, right. I think there
Speaker 1: is there's still heavy industry there. There's still a need
Speaker 1: for power and energy. Even if you take a slightly
Speaker 1: lower carbon and you know, less carbon intensive route, you
Speaker 1: still need a lot more of this stuff. And it's
Speaker 1: still relatively poor place, and and it requires, uh, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of investment in growth before it can
Speaker 1: make these kind of decisions. So you know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to sound like I'm sort of excusing it, um,
Speaker 1: but I think the challenge is pretty enormous and we
Speaker 1: I think we have to sort of acknowledge that. So
Speaker 1: we gave you this challenge of three countries, which was
Speaker 1: a little bit unfair because we put the onus on
Speaker 1: you to decide the notes that we were going to
Speaker 1: focus on and then mark through Indonesia into the conversation.
Speaker 1: If there was another country, what was the runner up
Speaker 1: that you would have wanted to talk about that we
Speaker 1: don't have time to talk about today. Well, actually Indonesia
Speaker 1: is a pretty good one, so that that was good. Um.
Speaker 1: I think interesting things are also happening across Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: So Indonesia would would be one. Obviously it's very large,
Speaker 1: their significant contributor to emissions, etcetera. But other ones we
Speaker 1: see progress are places like Malaysia or or Thailand. Malaysia,
Speaker 1: for instance, was a country that didn't really have a
Speaker 1: very let's say, sophisticated view not long ago at least,
Speaker 1: you know, wasn't really talking a lot about any of
Speaker 1: this stuff but energy transition, climate or things like that.
Speaker 1: But recently, I think has actually made a lot of progress,
Speaker 1: has looked at sort of deregulating its power market, looked
Speaker 1: at evs, look at UM, sort of advancing environmental policy.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of things happening there and that's
Speaker 1: that's very interesting. UM One more all throw in there
Speaker 1: actually is Vietnam. There's also a lot of interest there
Speaker 1: because it's um It has one of the fastest power
Speaker 1: demand sort of growth UM stories in the region, has
Speaker 1: a lot of co fire power plants, and there are
Speaker 1: a lot of countries lining up to build more co
Speaker 1: fire power plants in the Vietnam. But actually Vietnam experienced
Speaker 1: a very large boom and solar in the first half
Speaker 1: of this year thanks to actually some new policies and
Speaker 1: some new activities that took place there. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's it's it'll be good to keep an eye
Speaker 1: on these countries actually because they are like India, they're
Speaker 1: growing faster, but also like India and China to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, they're becoming more and more open to looking
Speaker 1: at new things and new ideas. It's good to know
Speaker 1: that we will have plenty to talk about next time
Speaker 1: you passed through London justin. Think you very much for
Speaker 1: joining us today. Thank you, thank you for having me.
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