Implementing ASEAN's Regional Integrated Energy System Towards 2060

ASEAN’s decarbonized, integrated, regional energy system is not only technically feasible but economically compelling and the strongest guarantee of energy security available to the region. A power system planned and financed nationally requires each member state to over-invest in generation and reserve capacity, leaves the region's diverse renewable resources underused, and prices every cross-border project against the credit of its weakest participant, while the principal threats to supply in the current environment originate outside the region. To this end, the Enhanced ASEAN Power Grid MoU was endorsed at the 43rd ASEAN Ministers on Energy Meeting in October 2025, its operationalisation sits among the Priority Economic Deliverables of the Philippines' 2026 ASEAN Chairmanship, and the first economy-wide, multi-vector, least-cost optimisation of an integrated ASEAN energy system, developed under the ASEAN Regional Integrated Energy System (ARIES) programme, will be published in the 9th ASEAN Energy Outlook shortly after IW26. This lab takes up the question that remains: the system is compelling and feasible, so what makes it implementable?