Southeast Asia emerging as key solar market hotspot

Southeast Asia emerging as key solar market hotspot

Southeast Asia is emerging as a hotspot for global solar investment with over $10 billion invested just last year. In 2020, the region represented 12% of the global solar market and installed capacity has more than doubled every year since 2018, Rishab Shrestha, analyst at Wood Mackenzie told the APAC power and renewables summit today.

Vinutha Hosur, head of strategy for APAC at German-based renewable energy company BayWa, told the Wood Mackenzie summit that the region has become a hotspot partly because it has the sunniest belt in the world compared with any other developed market. The momentum in Southeast Asia started after the Paris Climate Agreement with Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore spearheading the solar market since the middle of the last decade, she added.

Feed-in tariffs in Vietnam and the Philippines also triggered huge interest in the region and created the environment for large growth, said Hosur.