Improving Regional Cooperation in Energy Today

Regional energy cooperation is a viable way to enable countries to efficiently use their resources. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) sees this as an opportunity to help countries meet their demands for energy, reduce emissions, and to stimulate financial growth.

ADB continues to improve its efforts in this arena. It conducted a seminar on regional energy cooperation, which yielded key lessons. Foremost of these is the need for flexibility in terms of approaches to regional energy cooperation, since resources, endowments, market mix and associate interests vary across subregions.  Regional energy cooperation can also be quite complicated and time consuming, due to the different interests of partners. Other factors likewise limit regional energy cooperation, such as inappropriate organizational set-up, and lack of data, among others. 

To further push regional energy cooperation, ADB needs to make adjustments, externally and internally.  It must clearly define its role in this area through concrete modes of engagement. Currently, the role of multilateral banks in this front is still uncertain, except in the Greater Mekong Subregion. It should allocate more resources to the weaker parties of bilateral deals, and steer these deals towards a multilateral framework.  ADB must also go beyond mere interconnection of infrastructure. It should integrate knowledge management, technology and equipment manufacturing. To do all these, ADB should strengthen the home front, too, through increased funding, enhanced internal cooperation, and a reliable database on regional cooperation.