Clean EDGE Asia

Building on the work of Asia EDGE to further sustainable energy growth in the region, Clean EDGE Asia advances a free and open, connected, prosperous, resilient, and secure Indo-Pacific, the goal of the 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy. Under Clean EDGE Asia, USAID plays a leading role helping its Indo-Pacific partners reduce greenhouse gas emissions, mobilize investments for clean energy, increase clean energy generation and deployment, and improve energy services for households across the region.

Clean Energy Crucial to Economic Recovery

Spanning the California coast to the western shores of India, the Indo-Pacific is home to the world’s fastest growing markets. The region’s rapid expansion resulted in a massive appetite for energy, and today, more than 50 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from Asia and the Pacific.

Accelerating the region’s clean energy transition is critical to limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. To meet their climate goals, countries in Southeast Asia alone need to spend up to $190 billion a year by 2030 on solar and wind capacity and improving energy grids. Private investment will help countries upgrade and expand energy systems, modernize aging infrastructure, and build sustainable regional energy markets.

Increasing clean energy investment and ensuring the security and profitability of new renewable energy projects in the Indo-Pacific will help countries boost economic recovery and growth and avert the worst impacts of climate change.

Unleashing the Indo-Pacific’s Energy Potential

USAID is leveraging its technical expertise, enduring regional presence, and convening power to help the Indo-Pacific region overcome its energy constraints. Our efforts expand power utilities’ ability to adopt and deploy clean energy, reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that exacerbate climate change, attract private investment, and accelerate the adoption of regional and bilateral competitive energy markets.

We build on significant success and experience in this area. USAID has mobilized over $7 billion in clean energy investments that are helping to decarbonize and strengthen Asia’s power systems and their resilience. USAID support helped the region install nearly 10,000 megawatts of new renewable energy capacity—enough to power nearly 8 million homes. This contributed to preventing roughly 93 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in greenhouse gas emissions from being released into the atmosphere over the next 15 years, the equivalent of over 20 million passenger cars off the road for a year.

USAID’s Clean EDGE Asia activities focuses on four primary areas:

Improving Utilities’ Capacity And Readiness

Transformation of the region’s energy sector means transforming power utilities so that they can take on the challenge of integrating clean energy technologies. Today, the region’s utilities range from state-owned to private, market-based energy utilities with different energy sources and different levels of technical, financial, and operational prowess. USAID boosts utilities’ readiness for increasing levels of clean energy in their generation mix and equips them with the skills and expertise needed to advance a clean energy transition.

Increased Deployment of Clean Energy Technologies

A secure and sustainable energy future requires meeting growing demands with environmentally and socially sustainable energy solutions, while maintaining reliability. USAID support to the clean energy sector prioritizes least-cost long-term planning and efficient integration of transformative technologies, including battery storage, smart grids, electric vehicles, and energy efficient products and practices. USAID helps countries put into place policies, plans, and business models that attract private investment, drive up consumer demand for clean energy, and importantly, bring clean energy to underserved areas.

Transparent, Best Value Procurement

Open, transparent, and best-value procurement processes ensure equal access to opportunity for U.S. and other companies, while allowing countries to affordably integrate clean energy generation. USAID promotes transparent, competitive energy procurement practices, including renewable energy auctions, inclusion of high standards, and the legal and regulatory frameworks that encourage increased private sector participation in the energy sector.

Regional Energy Trade and Integration

Regional electricity markets can maximize renewable resources, enhance energy security, and unlock billions of dollars in savings through avoided infrastructure and least-cost power exchange. USAID helps develop legal and regulatory frameworks that integrate renewables into the development of power markets, including regional power exchanges. This effort builds on and leverages bilateral initiatives, including electricity market expansion, that strengthen and prepare individual countries for regional coordination and integration.

Partner Agencies

The Clean EDGE Asia initiative is supported by USAID; Departments of State, Commerce, Energy, Treasury, Interior, and Agriculture; Export-Import Bank; U.S. International Development Finance Corporation; and U.S. Trade & Development Agency.