Asian Development Bank

With energy demand projected to almost double in the Asia and Pacific region by 2030, there is an urgent need for innovative ways to generate power while at the same time reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Compounding the problem is widespread energy poverty across Asia with almost a billion people still without access to electricity.

As many of ADB’s developing member countries (DMCs) forge ambitious plans to meet these challenges ADB is committed to helping them achieve access to clean energy for all.

The Asia-Pacific region is the global leader in clean energy development, but there is much more that can be done to raise the level of clean energy deployment.

From 1990 to 2009, ADB provided over $25.8 billion in assistance for energy projects, extending electricity and modern fuels to hundreds of millions of people in Asia and the Pacific. ADB’s updated Energy Policy aims to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy. Clean energy investments in 2010 reached $1.76 billion with access-to-energy projects exceeding $950 million, up from $418 million in 2009. Between 2003 and 2009 such assistance connected 1.27 million households to electricity. Improving access to cleaner, renewable sources of energy strengthens energy security in DMCs and is a key to mitigating climate change.

ADB’s Energy Efficiency Initiative, responsible for the rise in ADB’s clean energy investment to a billion dollars a year has evolved into the Clean Energy Program which now focuses on supporting clean energy in smaller DMCs and facilitating the adoption of low carbon technologies throughout the region. ADB’s new technology focused initiatives, announced during the Asia Clean Energy Forum 2010, aim to greatly increase the amount of solar and wind power generated in the region and accelerate the transfer of low carbon technology through a private-sector led, ADB-backed market model.

ADB is on track to reach its clean energy investment target of $2 billion a year by 2013. The program has already invested $2.8 billion over the past 2 years in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and clean technology deployment, encouraging DMCs to embrace low-carbon energy generation and utilization. In 2010, ADB issued thematic bonds for the first time, thus raising $244 million through Clean Energy Bonds.