The International Energy Agency (IEA) has opened its first office outside of its Paris headquarters in the agency’s 50-year history.
The IEA inaugurated the new office in Singapore with a special ceremony involving Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong and IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol, with more than 1200 dignitaries present.
These included Ministers from around the world and over 30 Ambassadors, with Singapore’s Minister for Trade and Industry Tan See Leng, IEA Governing Board Chair Anders Hoffmann and IEA Standing Group of Global Energy Dialogue Chair Ursula Borak joining Deputy Prime Minister Gan and Dr Birol on stage for the inauguration.
Following the ceremony, Birol had a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister of Singapore Lawrence Wong at the Presidential Palace, the Istana, to discuss the situation in global and regional energy markets and to mark the inauguration of the new IEA office and plan next steps.
According to the IEA’s new Southeast Asia Energy Outlook, the region is set to be one of the world’s largest engines of energy demand growth over the next decade as its rapid economic, population and manufacturing expansions drive up consumption.
Based on today’s policy settings, the region is on course to account for 25% of global energy demand growth between now and 2035, second only to India over the period.
While the region is currently heavily reliant on fossil fuel imports, clean energy sources such as wind and solar, alongside modern bioenergy and geothermal, are projected to meet more than a third of the growth in energy demand in the region by 2035.
Even so, the surge in demand poses challenges for the region’s energy security and efforts to achieve national climate goals, with fossil fuel imports set to continue to rise and energy-related carbon dioxide emissions on course to increase by 35% between now and mid-century.