Asia Pacific touted to become global leader in clean energy

According to a new report compiled by Frost and Sullivan, the Asia Pacific region is poised to become the global leader for clean energy in 2017.

"We expect 2017 to be a transition year for long term changes, globally. With the rising protectionism across the world, issue of energy security will once again come to the fore in Asia Pacific. This will accelerate adoption of clean technologies which can be harnessed locally and those that are less impacted by global policy and price fluctuations," noted Ravi Krishnaswamy, vice president, Energy & Environment, Asia Pacific, Frost and Sullivan.
Frost and Sullivan notes that Despite the likely reduction of feed-in-tariff support in many countries including Australia, Japan, Philippines etc., a healthy growth for renewable technologies lead by solar PV at about 17.8% in 2017. [Report: renewable energy in Asia Pacific – the outlook to 2030]
Initiatives by the local governments to increase the access and quality of power supply, to both residences and industries, is aiding the growth of a range of distributed energy technologies such as biomass, solar PV, microgrids and small temporary power plants. The total distributed energy market is likely to be $18.36 billion in 2017 in Asia Pacific representing a 14.0% year-on-year growth.
Furthermore, with nearly $137 billion likely to be invested, the transmission and distribution sector will present the largest opportunity for power equipment. With China's rollout of smart meters having peaked, the market will depend on Japan's ongoing implementation. [Smart meters worldwide: Asia Pacific pushes growth to 780m by 2020]
Countries such as China, Japan, India and Thailand are also investing significantly in large distance ultra-high voltage transmission capacity to balance the grid, with increasing share of renewable energy.

Energy storage

The firm states that Asia Pacific is home to some of the largest battery manufacturers, but lags behind the US and Europe in terms of storage. China, however, China's is driven toward leveraging energy storage to effectively integrate its large intermittent renewable resources, as a part of its 13th five year plan, offering major stimulus to the Asian market.
Apart from storage, biggest beneficiary of ongoing global trend of digital transformation will be the homes and buildings sector in Asia. Proliferation of competitive energy management technologies will be aided by the use of cloud and open platform building management solutions (BMS). Frost and Sullivan is of the opinion that facility management companies will move into new service frontiers by acquiring and engaging in partnership with niche information technology players. With the availability of cheap and user-friendly devices for home automation, the smart home market is expected to show a strong growth in China, South Korea and Japan.