 panel is on energy security in Asia. I think we all know that the energy narrative picture in Asia has changed very dramatically over the last decade, at least in part because of the rapid economic growth. So we have four great panelists to join us here today and who will give us brief overviews of the situation from their perspective and then we will have a discussion involving the audience. So our first speaker is Jonathan Elkind who is the Acting Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Energy. Previously Jonathan served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Policy and International Affairs and earlier before that he worked at the Brookings Institution on energy security and foreign policy issues. Jonathan the floor is yours. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Murray. Ladies and gentlemen it's really a pleasure to be here at CSIS today. I see that one of the dilemmas of having a beautiful new building is that the the world outside we you get reminders that the world outside is out there and a distraction it certainly is. It is in in my view very fitting that we have this discussion about energy security in the Asian frame at this time and also in this place because between the developments in energy security the challenges and opportunities that one sees emerging in Asia and those that one sees emerging in the United States over the last several years one could say that the two are the most dynamic pieces of the global energy scene at present. The United States and our companies have worked together with the countries and companies of Asia on energy issues for quite a long time. Nonetheless I think it is worth taking a step back and looking at kind of the current state of play in terms of context that provides the backdrop to our discussion on this panel. In 1977 US crude oil imports amounted to 46% of US consumption at roses high is nearly 70% a few years ago but dramatically then in the period of the this new young century we've seen an important change. In 2013 domestic crude oil production in the United States amounted to nearly 10 million barrels a day on and it looks like now for the foreseeable future the imports of crude oil into the United States will be on a downward trend not an upward trend that was true so very recently. In Asia meanwhile one sees dramatic growth in crude oil consumption and in other energy consumption. According to ADB the Asian Development Bank net oil imports in the Asia Pacific region will rise to more than 25 million barrels a day by 2035 and that's pretty close to the current crude oil output of the Middle East. Within that the International Energy Agency foresees that oil dependency in Southeast Asia will be probably on the order of 75% by that same time period of 2035. These statistics I think are useful as framing on the oil side because they speak to the importance of investment and trade across boundaries and between different regions of the global energy world. One can see similar interesting changes happening in total demand if you look at some of the data historically back to the 1970s. In 1977 the United States accounted for 31% of global oil consumption. Asia was roughly 17% of that same period and today we find that those orders of magnitude have roughly reversed with the United States consuming around 20% of global production Asia around 33%. So I won't go further into this context but I will just underscore that whether one looks at coal with the dramatic rise of coal combustion in China in other Asian countries, whether one looks at oil, whether one looks at natural gas with increasing global trade of liquefied natural gas, one sees very dynamic growth all across Asia and that is an important backdrop to our topic today. If I look from the U.S. perspective at how we are engaging with our partners in Asia I would call out several different features. One is that the United States is committed to working with our partners, our friends, our allies from around the globe to enhance energy security for all involved. In May of this year the G7 energy ministers met in Rome for the purpose of a renewed focus on energy security as an issue that again had kind of had receded from view for a period of time and then reemerged into the forefront of our focus. A second piece of the U.S. energy policy that I would emphasize at the outset is a focus on accelerating a transition to a low carbon economy. In June of last year President Obama rolled out his Climate Action Plan which calls for important steps that will significantly alter over a long horizon the profile of U.S. energy consumption and use. In addition the President's Climate Action Plan called for steps to make our energy systems and our economy more broadly significantly more resilient to a changing climate because this is the reality that we already are experiencing. And third we are engaging with international partners on this agenda as well. Let me give just a couple of examples before I close. One in the context of APEC the United States has worked very closely with partners from all around the Asia Pacific region focusing on energy development, energy security and energy sustainability. For example the energy working group under APEC is pursuing now goals of reducing energy intensity by 45 percent across all of the economies of APEC by 2035 based on 2005 levels doubling the share of renewable energy in the APEC economies energy mix by 2030 and collaborating on the phase out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. In the International Energy Agency which counts as among its members several important Asian partners the membership of the IEA has been seeking to increase our engagement with other nonmember countries across Asia. One particular example that I would give in this context are the conversations about a new form of a nonmember affiliation between IEA and some key partners including China and India. This is the idea still under development of an association relationship between those nonmembers and IEA. This is motivated by our general sense again that the dynamism in the Asian energy context is one that calls for significantly increased engagements. We are also working bilaterally with important partners all across Asia. I will not in view of time go into details here. I will simply highlight three well let's call it four in view of Prime Minister Modi's visit this week. Four key Asian relationships that matter deeply to the United States in the energy arena. One is with India where earlier this week there was a series of announcements about new initiatives in the energy and climate space. A second is with China. Indeed, when the APEC summit occurs in about six weeks time it is reasonable to expect that again energy will be an important part of that conversation and certainly in the bilateral meeting that President Obama will have with President Xi Jinping we expect the same. Japan has been for years a very very important partner to the United States all across the waterfront in terms of different technology spaces, in terms of policy collaborations, energy efficiency, the gamut from one to the other. And last but not least our collaborations with Republic of Korea are I would say also an important piece of our bilateral work. So I will stop here and hope that I've been able to provide at least a point of departure from the U.S. perspective. The core point that I would emphasize is the following. In a time when one sees a great deal of dynamism in the energy context of the United States we nonetheless are focused very very closely on the fact that the dynamism in the Asian energy economies is the other prevailing reality. We applaud this. We want to work closely with Asian partners. I'd be happy to take any questions that you all may have after the speakers, the other speakers have finished. Thank you very much. Thanks Jonathan for that very helpful overview. Our second speaker is Mr. Tanayuki Sumita. Mr. Sumita is the Director General of Natural Resources and the Fuel Department in the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy in Japan's Ministry of Economy and Trade. Previous to this job he served with Mitty in Brussels where he worked to improve cooperation between the EU and Japan. And Sumita-san is a graduate of Georgetown University. Please, Sumita-san. Thanks Marie. It is my pleasure to be here in front of you to explain our view on the energy security issues in Asia. And also I'm very happy to come back here after the 22 years after the graduating of the Georgetown University Foreign Service. And as you well know that the energy security issue is one of the very important issue in energy policy in any country. The main period of the energy policy is so equal three years. Energy security, economic growth and environment. And in the case of Asia, the Asian countries have a very good mixture of the supplying and consumption. I mean some of the Asian countries are the supplying countries of energy and some are the very big consumer of energy. But at the same time we have faced several challenges, especially recently. The first one is as Mr. Elkain mentioned the increase in the oil import in the future. And secondly we are facing, still we are already facing that the very high price of gas, especially LNG. This means that we have some trouble, some difficulty in utilizing natural gas. And third one is how we can make those two challenges compatible. So the energy, environmental issues and economic growth, especially in the case of coal, how to utilize the coal. And at the current situation the biggest challenge is how to respond to the energy demand. From the viewpoint of the primary energy supply, we have a very good mixture of oil, gas and coal and so on. But as to the secondary energy, we clearly see that the very rapid increase of demand on electricity. Some prediction says that during this coming two decades the demand of electricity will increase by 100%. But at the same time we need to secure the environment or conserve the environment. That's why we need to encourage those Asian countries to utilize non-coal or some kind of very less coal options like nuclear or renewable energies. This is the very common idea maybe which are totally shared with the US government to encourage the local options to Asian countries. But at the same time, if we see the energy security issues or economic growth, the still for many Asian countries coal has some advantage from those point of view. That's why according to the IEA's prospect, at this moment the portion of the coal power plant is 70%, 70% of total electricity supply and it will still more than half in the year 2013. In other words, the total electricity demand on coal power plant will increase by 80% during this coming 20 years. To reduce the dependency on coal is one of the very common interests for US and Japan in Asian countries. But as I mentioned, the initial approach is to encourage them to utilize nuclear gas or renewable energy, those kind of low carbon options. But at the same time they are facing some concern on financial or security and so on. Especially in the case of gas, we are facing very high price of natural gas. That's why the gas is not a very good option for East Asian countries and also nuclear and renewable will cost a lot. That's why ideally speaking to reduce drastically the dependency on coal is the best option for US and Japan. But maybe more pragmatically to reduce the CO2 emission from the coal power plant is the second best option and the very big challenge for us. And to reduce the CO2 reduction from the coal power plant is mainly realized by the improvement of efficiency of electricity generation. And in the current situation, the most advanced technology is the ultra super critical, which has more than 45% energy efficiency. And it is almost 20% better than the very traditional coal power plants. It means that we can reduce the CO2 emission by 20% by introducing a very high efficient coal power plants. But at the same time, such kind of high tech, high efficient coal power plants cost a lot. In the case of ultra super critical coal power plants, it takes almost 1.4 billion US data to introduce those kind of USC ultra super critical. It is almost 40% more expensive compared to the very conventional subcritical. And also if we compare the total cost, for example, by 40 years time, the total cost is almost the same in the case of subcritical and ultra super critical. That's why this big initial cost should be financed by some ways. That's why we need to encourage the Asian countries to introduce as high as possible technology concerning coal power plants. And by doing so, we can avoid some introduction or deployment of low efficient coal power plants, which may be supported by undisciplined finance taken by non-OECD countries. If we can very effectively encourage them to introduce the high coal power plants, then the total CO2 emission will be reduced by 20% at most. And in this situation, the very important function for Japan is falling. First of all, we have very high efficient coal power plants in operation, especially the ultra super critical, with very big strengths of operational technique and also the maintenance technique, which enables to maintain the high efficiency rate for a long time. It is a very important point. And also we are now investing a lot to the next generation technology like IGCC or IGSC. In addition to that, we have made a lot of effort in cooperation with the U.S. governments or U.S. partners in the area of carbon capture storage or carbon capture utilization. To share these recognition is very important and already in the end of August or in the end of last month, Japan asset meeting, Japan asset minister's meeting or East Asian Energy Minister meeting issued some joint statement related to the introduction of green coal technology. So in some, we see that in the future, in the Asian area, the demand on energy will increase. But we need to have a very strong concern on the environmental issues. That's why we need to have some solution to make both challenges compatible by introducing several measures, including the encouragement of deployment of carbon coal technology. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Sumita-san. That was very helpful. Our third speaker is Dr. Han Pumin, who is an energy economist at IRIA. They have a very long name. It's even longer than CSIS, Economic Research Institute for ASEAN in East Asia, and it's based in Jakarta. Dr. Pumin, or Dr. Han rather, does work here on energy security, energy efficiency, coal technology, power infrastructure connections, et cetera. Dr. Han is a graduate of the Economic Development and Policies from Kobe University in Japan. Dr. Han, please. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, a very good morning indeed. I'm so delighted to be here, having the opportunity to speak to you about Asia in terms of energy security. I would like to start off by saying several challenges so that we'll give you a clear picture of why I derived conclusions in terms of energy security in that way. Perhaps the way Asia thinking and the US, North America, and Europe perhaps have slightly different perspectives, that's why I want to start off by challenges what we are facing so that the conclusion will be understood by many participants here. As you see, that Asia is growing in terms of economic growth, that exciting, that given decade of a robot economic growth, but that growth also encompassed with many challenges, that including the rising of energy demand. Rising of energy demand is not a good new, but we have to curb those energy demand by various measures. And also with the growing population, just ASEAN and East Asia alone have 3.3 billion population. ASEAN has 600 million population. And imagine how many populations are denied in terms of energy access, particularly for electricity. So in terms of energy demand in the region, actually by today, by now, until 2035, for ASEAN and East Asia as a whole, that energy demand will grow by double from 400 million tons of oil equivalent up to 8,000, 8,500 million tons of oil equivalent. And in terms of energy perspective, it's an enormous issue that how we secure reliable energy in terms of affordable price to keep up those growth by saying that how many more populations we provide access to more than commercial energies. So to say that I think this issue we are facing is one is providing energy access, keep energy securities, and also the issue to keep economic growth. So another point is we are at the crossroad that we also strive the balance of environmental issue. So how actually as Asia perspective and position in terms of energy security? I think it depends on how you look at energy security. I'm familiar with several phase here. They are experts on energy securities, but it depends on how you look at it. And in the energy mix in Asia, particularly ASEAN in East Asia, you see that among energy mix you have fuel, you have coal, you have renewable and others, but coal has a very significant and important role in striving economic growth in ASEAN and East Asia. To say that U.S. and North America have really enjoying coal in the past six decades to keep U.S. by now until you have a cell gas that could push another scenario of issue. But saying ASEAN now, we are not really enjoying the cell gas like the North America has enjoyed and the price are four or five times, and we do not have infrastructure and connectivity like in North America in terms of pipeline connectivity. More energy are met by import, and ours production actually very low, but will be met mostly by 31 percent of import for energy. But if you look at energy mix in terms of coal, coal have a greater share in energy mix, more than 50 percent and continue to be almost 50 percent in energy mix by 2035. So with energy security perspective, that one need to have a reliable delivery and affordable price. So coal in terms of supply stability for ASEAN is very good. So by donation and Australia having very reliable price and supply in the region. So in that regard coal remain very strategic important for energy security for ASEAN and East Asia. I think when we are coming to stride the balance between how we are concerning the way the coal has been burning currently, and the practice actually ASEAN and East Asia, but for emerging economy and poor countries, they are burning coal vastly because of the current power plant. Coal power plant have very low efficiency in terms of thermal plant. But there are a variety of options there, including these clean coal technologies. By introducing clean coal technologies, you can burn coal more efficiently and at the same time saving fuel and minimize operation and maintenance cost. But the key issue is the upfront cost investment are higher compared to low efficient coal power plant. And currently there is a variety of technology there. Currently that Japan having the high efficiency coal power plant and those China is emerging, but I think there is some struggle in terms of how reliable of those power plant. So in that regard it's ASEAN actually also expressed interest in using high efficient coal power plant. But we are not able to afford that because upfront cost. So with that regards, my institute, where I come from, we conduct this comparison of the economic return in terms of different type of clean coal technologies. And we found that by using ultra-supercritical power plant, it really provides a very good return in terms of economic and environmental benefit just within 25 time frame period and in terms of providing electricity cost in cheaper in terms of labor cost of electricity. So with that we really provide strong recommendation to East Asia energy making that ASEAN should actually afford this kind of high efficient technology coal power plant which is the current technology are mature, are commercialized, but why are ASEAN not able to access to those technologies because upfront cost. With that context I would say that this deployment of clean coal technologies are urgent to support that if the ASEAN cannot afford that they can afford lower cheaper technologies that could be locked in so many years before it can change any scenario. So there must be international framework in that regard to support ASEAN to afford clean coal technology but particularly would be a public financing because those upfront costs will be high. Any company I think is difficult to access loan or whatever created by itself without support, public financial support on clean coal technologies. And with that regard I think it's a very crucial role support that in the absence of the public financing on clean coal technology imagine that non-OECD member country particularly emerging Chinese company and other they are ready to invest in a lower cost and also less efficient. So more ASEAN likely to afford those from Chinese technology why current efficient technology are available and we are not able to afford it. So in that regard I think I would like to stress that any these public financial support will make ASEAN green growth in that regard otherwise we will find a brown economy in the future. So with that I will stop and then take question later on we have interaction. Thank you very much. Thanks Dr. Han. Our forespeaker batting clean up to quote Dorothy Dwaskin is Michael Lifeman. He is directs GE power and waters long term power generation forecasting. Prior to working for GE Michael led the modeling efforts at the US Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Michael, thank you very much. I think Michael wants to use the PowerPoint Daniel. Yeah, thank you Murray and thank you CSIS for hosting and convening this really interesting and important day. While the PowerPoints being opened I should say I noted with some dismay that I was the odd man out and the only one bringing slides and that even the representative from Microsoft didn't bring a PowerPoint. So I don't know what that says. I'm going to apologize in advance to the folks on my left because I'm going to have to look a little bit at my slides over here. I'm going to echo some of the remarks that Dr. Han Sumita-san said about energy mix. I might have a few different conclusions but I'm going to talk a little bit about energy security through energy diversity and I'm going to focus really only on the power sector. I'm not going to talk about transportation oil but this is power sector and so the first thing I'm showing is that this is the mix of capacity across Asia so this includes China, India, ASEAN, Japan, Korea, Australia and you can see the brown there, the big wedge on the right has increased substantial percent. It looks like my percentages are not totally visible but you can see that the percentage currently at the end of 2013 is slightly more than 50% coal. The sort of green box in the middle there at 5%, that's the renewables, the 2% in red, that's nuclear. You can see that our projections for the following 10 years show beginning of a reversal of the trend for the last 10 years so again a lot of this is because of China. So this great run up in coal in China influences the entire Asian energy picture and over the next 10 years some of that begins to reverse. There's more nuclear, there's more wind, there's more solar, and gas kind of holds its own. Next slide please. Now across the different economies in Asia the growth varies and there are different reasons for that. There are different priorities for example priorities on nuclear in Japan which is still I think figuring out what will happen until all the plants that are now offline versus some of the ASEAN economies that are beginning to seriously consider nuclear as part of their energy future. You can see huge increases in the rates of solar and wind for example and across the ASEAN economies over 700% growth in those capacity over the next decade whereas coal you know still growing but not nearly as quickly as some of the other options. And again you know sort of a strong push for increasing role of gas across many Asian economies. Now to get to this point to get to a energy system or power system that has more diversity in it, less coal in it there are a number of challenges that economies will face and the first is as was mentioned by Dr. Hanans and Mita San the fuel price right so you can see on the left of these various bars the coal price across the region I've got some just representative economies here is significantly lower than both the diesel price and the gas price the second bar there is the price in 2024. So the difference between $2 gas and $14 gas in Malaysia or 4 and 16 in Japan I mean these are really enormous differences and so getting away from coal is going to depend on some required you know it's going to require concerted and long-term actions. Another challenge again as referred to by Dr. Han is that really huge increases in electricity demand and all the attendant infrastructure costs that come with that you don't just have to build a power plant you need to build the transmission you need to build the LNG terminals there's a lot that needs to be built. Despite that huge growth by the end of the following 10 years we still don't see the same energy access across Asia that we see in Japan or certainly not in the United States so for example by 2024 despite the really kind of unfathomable almost increases in electricity demand that we've seen in China and that we expect to see in China they will still have two thirds the electricity per capita than Japan today to say nothing of ASEAN or India so huge gaps will remain even after the coming decade of growth but there are even more challenges right so for example what will Japan how will Japan replace the nuclear fleet the portion of the nuclear fleet that won't return in Japan there's some very very high tariffs for wind so you know wind producers get an incentive to produce but there's very arduous permitting takes three or four years as opposed to one which is what it takes year to get a wind plant up in Korea it's very very difficult to site any new plants really strong nimbyism China has lots of new policies to discourage or almost prohibit in some cases the siting of new coal plants in many of the coastal provinces water use many of these power technologies require an enormous amount of water there's pressure from both agriculture and just general scarcity we were talking a little bit about issues in Lao PDR grid deposit is something that I think people don't quite appreciate it's very hard to power an island first of all if you don't have somewhere from which to move power in you have to have more plants available to provide reliable power but then of course transmission connections across islands or gas connections across islands is enormously difficult and then in the non-island countries of China you just have these vast expanses so huge transmission lines financing we talked a little bit about how hard it is to build a very heavy capex plant the op-ex the long-term operations of the plant get worse if you've got foreign exchange issues right so if you've got dollar denominated fuels and your local currency is weaker against that dollar then the cost of buying the fuel over time just gets harder and harder okay so GE is a technology company and so some of the solutions that I'm going to present are mainly technology solutions but so one way forward is more gas and more efficient use of that gas so the chart I'm showing on the left is the increase our projected increase in the natural gas supply in China over the next 10 years and it's about a three-fold increase by 2025 and how are they getting there some of it is pipeline from places like Turkmenistan some of that is increasing liquefied natural gas LNG purchases from all parts of the world some of that is unconventional gas their own shale gas resources and their own tight sands another kind of unconventional gas resources so more gas available through China similar kind of story not as dramatic excuse me for ASEAN but there's also a technology story which is that in addition to the supercritical coal or ultra supercritical coal there are new combined cycle gas plants so for those who aren't familiar with the terminology a combined cycle gas plant uses both a gas turbine and a steam turbine it's about twice as efficient as a coal plant and the very latest and the newest most efficient is from us it's called the HA combined cycle and we're talking about 61% efficiency which just a few years ago was really almost unthinkable so this is a dramatic improvement in how efficiently we can use gas next slide please another way forward this is something that I think is really going to lead to dramatic changes in ASEAN so Dr. Han talked about the lack of infrastructure for gas one of the ways that countries there are beginning to get around this is something called a virtual pipeline so what does this mean instead of the traditional route where you've got an actual pipeline brought in on a huge tanker on a humongous gasification facility for your LNG basically you have smaller LNG you have compressed natural gas or small LNG so if you can have CNG you can put it in a box basically you can just put it in a little truck and you can use roads and barges to get it to where you need it to get it without building a whole expensive pipeline and of course if you don't have if you're not committed to one pipeline you have much more flexibility in how you get from origin to destination so it provides a whole new degree of flexibility the first one in Indonesia we've got an MOU with Indonesia's state utility PLN to develop virtual pipelines and we've just commissioned recently CNG fueled island power plant and it's about a 35% savings versus diesel so really kind of incredible change in how gas is going to be delivered the scale of course is quicker it's months instead of years to get these things done displaces diesel there's lots and lots of advantages here in addition some of the engines that can use these gas turbines sorry that can use the gas can also use biogas so with all of the biomass resources in Asia we're talking about the remote islands in particular you can use woody biomass gasify them and put them in our reciprocating engines so flexible power solutions modular small post the tragedy of Fukushima you can't think of nuclear without first questioning how is it going to be safe one of the new technologies that GE has available is the economic simplified boiling water reactor ESBWR it's not much less of a mouthful but it's now the safest reactor design available it was actually just about a week ago I think passed another review by the US nuclear regulatory commission at NRC it passively cools for seven days which is twice as good as our competitor it's simpler in that there are far fewer components than a traditional power plant you don't even need steam generators anymore so there are fewer things that can go wrong you need fewer people to operate there are fewer things that can fail 11 fewer systems in total you need 20% fewer staff to operate so there are all these advantages to nuclear that I think we need to consider rather than writing it off entirely lastly, in terms of the solutions we're offering is wind plants that are designed specifically for land constrained environments so our 285, one of three in other words that's 2.85 megawatts per turbine that's a big turbine and the idea is that if you've got a land constrained environment you need power density, a lot of power from one turbine so this is a design that's made specifically for Japan, but obviously it could be transferred with just minor modifications to other land constrained environments I think that's it for the wind slide and that's it, thanks very much for your time Excellent, thanks Michael I guess as a layman, not an energy expert one of the questions that emerges almost immediately when I listen to these different presentations is that Michael has suggested there's a lot of pretty nifty technology out there that's a lot cleaner than what we're using now and Dr. Han says, yeah we'd like that clean technology but we can't afford it so my question really for any of you but particularly for Jonathan or Samita-san whether you know of financing that is available for emerging economies in Asia that want to buy cleaner even if it's coal, cleaner, burning technology but can't afford it is there credit out there some place? Yes, in the case of Japan Japanese investment bank JVIC is now supplying some financial support to Asian countries to introduce high efficient coal power plants and also we have many more schemes to help developing countries in Asia to deploy low carbon technologies Speaking from the US perspective this is a tricky landscape in lots of different ways First of all the technology landscape itself is never static so one of the things that we spend a great deal of time and focus on at the US Department of Energy in some of the technical collaborations that we have with international partners and with industry domestically in the United States is on technology development and coming down the cost curve and you can see if you look at some of the different suites of technologies across the energy landscape how dramatic the progress has been so you see massive reductions for example in onshore wind in solar PV the same starting to happen in concentrated solar power so the opportunities of today and of tomorrow are not identical point one Point two there is a strategy issue that is an important one to grapple with when it comes to coal technology the United States understands that coal will be a part of the global energy mix it certainly is a part of the energy mix of the United States although today's share of coal in our total fuel mix is significantly reduced from that which it was as little as 10 years ago you've seen a drop from where coal traditionally has been about 50% of the US fuel mix today it is just under 40 there was a point a couple of years ago and this in response to the real-time movement of natural gas prices in the US where a very surprising thing happened where you had coal and natural gas representing roughly equal shares for a short time about 32% of our fuel mix so we expect that coal will be a part of the fuel mix going forward both in the United States and elsewhere but then there's what technologies and so this has been a it is certainly true as Sumita San and Dr. Hahn have both underscored that all things being equal it is preferable to have higher efficiency coal technologies in the marketplace there's no question about that the US perspective though is that the use of public finance to support non-carbon capture technologies in the marketplace is not something that we feel is appropriate why? because as the IEA's Energy Technology Perspectives document that was just released in the summer stated and I'll quote I think appropriate distillation of this issue the unrelenting rise in coal use without the deployment of CCS carbon capture and sequestration technology is fundamentally incompatible with our climate change objectives and this is the dilemma that we are trying to find a way to manage so the United States does not support the broad use of public finance through multilateral or bilateral sources we do have an exception to that rule which is for the least developed economies but otherwise this is a conscious choice to try to put our emphasis in moving that technology frontier in sending the emergence of carbon capture technology into the marketplace as we are doing in our own market and from that seeing costs change so that this technology is broadly affordable Opening it to the questions I just would like to have idea actually I respect the Jonathan idea in terms of how public finance actually why we have to subsidize on coal kind of things but I think perhaps we have to stick to the reality in terms of foreseeable future that in our prediction that in terms of coal power plan it continues to rise I think in that regard if in terms of climate change and other I think we have said the same concern and interest but let's look analyze this reality and scenario carefully the lack of public finance on the CCT ASEAN and ESHL will find their financing system but that financing system will link to less efficient coal power plan so I think the scenario is which one actually you're going to take let's say superpower country like you as concern on environmental issue I think we carefully analyze those scenario because ASEAN going to end up in power plan for civil future in that regard they are seeking for the current available best technologies for better environment but lack of why we have to subsidize though I fully agree but we have to stick to reality for that we need to have support to make sure that until they have something breakthrough in terms of technology like LNG and other ASEAN cannot afford ESHL cannot afford as I state already that this excitement in US about sale gas Asia do not enjoy at all because in terms of energy security those gas demand is continuing to have sale but in terms of energy mix coal is more reliable and provide energy access to billion of people that not access to electricity coal the most thing that they are going to build up more power plan in that regard I still stick to the public financing to be more realistic and also provide a better environmental issue because it's a global issue anyway I do not just I want to say my concern only thank you Please we'll open that up to the floor back there please wait for a microphone and then please introduce yourself Hi I'm Nancy Tom from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace I actually just want to follow up on the previous question like with like multilateral financiers like the World Bank and the ADB being more reluctant to finance like co-power plans I was wondering if other financiers might actually step in into public financing like Chinese financier, Japanese financier or like the newly established development bank or AIIB so I would like to hear your opinions on that Thank you Does anybody have an answer? Our concern is the Japanese concern is that like that I mean if there's no public support from World Bank or ADB or something like that then the other organization like Bricks Bank or AIIB may have some opportunity to finance those projects in such a case if those new institutions have the same discipline like focusing only on the high efficient co-power plans then it's okay but if they have no discipline just financing every new project then it is quite miserable situation where the CO2 emission will be increased that's why we hope that developed countries should encourage the developing countries to deploy the carbon green coal technologies My name is Tom Cutler I'm an independent energy consultant and I first want to compliment the panelists for their presentations on what I would say are the long-term aspects of the changing calculus of Asia's energy security My question is on the short-term aspects of energy security in the region let's say contingency planning for an oil supply disruption So the questions are is the region prepared in terms of strategic oil stocks or oil sharing plans for an oil supply disruption is the institutional architecture of the region the various international forums such as the IEA, ASEAN, ASEAN plus 3 APEC as well as the East Asia summit are they up to the task in terms of the region's institutional framework in dealing with short-term energy crises such as an oil supply disruption using tools such as strategic oil stocks or international oil sharing plans and if not, what can be done? Thank you Tom, that's a great question and it kind of brings out the reality that simultaneously we all together have to do two things one is manage the situation in which one exists now and the other is put in place the tools and both institutional and technological that can help us to move forward I would say that from the US perspective we think that this issue that you've raised is a very important one and one where there has been some very very promising collaborations that have gone on but I would not for a moment say that it is sufficient In some regards to highlight a couple of examples of collaboration that has already been underway you could look at the work that the International Energy Agency has done with a number of East Asian partners looking at preparedness responses what strategic reserves are in place what one would do how industry could meet its requirements and continue to provide for the population Thailand for example has been a very active participant with IEA has done a couple of emergency response exercises has hosted a region wide engagement China of course is another very important East Asian partner in this regard as now the world's largest oil importer there I would say to be candid we hope to find deeper collaboration going forward with China China is building its own strategic reserves which is an important step to happen we think that there is a great deal of scope for technical and policy and other interactions so that China which has this enormous stake in the functioning of today's global oil markets can provide the kind of transparency that is the necessity for all global participants including China to make informed decisions and we welcome the steps that the Chinese National Energy Agency has administration has taken together with the Department of Energy to deepen collaboration in this area we think it's a really really important thing so institutional framework good start much more needed Thanks to Mike Tom for a question actually you yourself is the one who really understand more on this issue actually ASEAN in contact I talk about ASEAN that we have we try to come up with similar kind of IEA requirement of 90 days of strategic reserve that I think in terms of oil stock pilings and of course gas could be included in some of the country but this originally pat glovious for oil and ASEAN as you know that not many countries meet those 90 day requirement because more of the stock are hold at inventories at this company level so it less than 30 days mainly and then only some countries like currently Thailand and other stuff up commit to 90 days 60 days to 90 days I think except Japan and it's having almost 200 days I guess and China currently also building stock but we do not have might be caught clearly about China and I think in that regard in terms of ASEAN particularly we understand that building this kind of facility are very would cause investment and one time I have provided common during this meeting of upside because ASEAN petroleum security authorities that with support from IEA it's important that because when you build this strategic reserve it has to be linked closely in terms of economy it doesn't need for ASEAN country to have not holding stock for 90 days sometimes it's not necessary because there are many practice in the region you can exchange swap kind of thing it's important to look closely in terms of structure or economy of each country because the reserve itself just to prevent if there's any disruption within 7 days or 2 weeks it could hit the economy or that particular country so some countries are small in terms of structure or economy it do not have to stop up building those kind of reserve but regional cooperation in terms of trust and other it become more significant and important so ASEAN will look at the requirement but also will pursue in the way how very cost effectively we can implement this strategic reserve in ASEAN country thank you in the case of Japan we see the importance of the collaboration among Asian countries to respond to such kind of crisis so that's why recent years we have talked with ASEAN colleagues under the framework of Japan ASEAN or ASEAN plus 3 mechanism to how we can tackle this issue in a cooperative manner but the discussion is still in a very early stage so in such a sense it would take some more time until some kind of more concrete solution might be decided or agreed other questions please gentlemen here I'm Mark Wall former U.S. State Department of Wyoming my question concerns nuclear power we had some comments on that but the panelists care to comment further on the future of nuclear power in the energy mix particularly in Japan but also elsewhere in Asia as to Japan at this moment as you know there is no nuclear power plant in operation among the 48 nuclear power plants in Japan and in the past three years ago the portion of the nuclear power plants in the total power supply was 32% but at this moment that is zero now it's some kind of effort for restart some nuclear power plants is ongoing and as to the initial two nuclear power plants the nuclear regulatory authority approved the safety of those two nuclear power plants that's why we are now in the process of persuading the local people and I hope that in the early next year by the early next year we will have the restart of those two nuclear power plants and already 20 nuclear power plants have have presented the plan to ask for their approval to the nuclear regulatory authority so one by one those applications will be examined and during this one or two or three years time some more nuclear power plants will be restarted but at this moment it is very difficult to expect to what percentage we can rely upon the nuclear power plants but the very clear direction is that the Japanese government needs to decrease the dependency on nuclear power plants for a long term period just thanks so much for the question just want to share with you that for asian perspective so that you can understand that we do not deny any nuclear power actually it's always the option of the energy mix that will require a lot of human capital and also capital cost itself it's very expensive, it just cannot currently only Vietnam is under construction of those nuclear power plants but Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia also considering but I think they are a public opponent to those kind of nucleus in Asia, it's very strong we've seen Fukushima accident we are very concerned about nuclear power energy mix in the future in asian itself the institute area where I'm working for now we are working on more on emergency response and preparedness in terms of data sharing and other support in terms of accident how country are cooperated in terms of sharing data and information in a faster manner we can build a working group in asian members so again this nuclear is one of the options but perhaps it's not really now and also upfront cost very high 405 times higher than current cold power plant thank you Michael thanks for the question one of the issues with nuclear is also the infrastructure that needs to be added to the grid nuclear plant anywhere the transmission system itself needs to be robust and hardened and so for asian countries in particular that's one of the challenges it's not just the upfront cost of the plant but all of the infrastructure that comes with it elsewhere in asia the chinese ambitions for nuclear are sort of startling I think it's on the order of 50 gigawatts over the next 10 or 12 years that they are planning on adding but we've been encouraged with a recent news department signaling some willingness to relook at the nuclear liability law which is a major obstacle to development of nuclear there I just jump in to take advantage of this question and link back to the frame of this panel which is about energy security by its title from our perspective in the US we feel very very strongly that energy security derives first and foremost from a high degree of diversification and good systems including institutional systems around the energy economy we certainly will see nuclear being continuing to be a part of the fuel mix in the united states obviously other countries need to make their own choices but we do see a real value particularly in a world looking for low and no carbon energy solutions we see a real value in the civil nuclear sector and see this as being an area that is full of potential for important collaborations also again to move the frontier the technology frontier whether one is talking about small modular reactors or other new promising technologies that may be just over the horizon we're almost out of time but is your question fairly short because we have two or three minutes standing between us and lunch thank you this question is addressed to Dr. can you please identify yourself please oh I'm Nina I work for the Children's National Medical Health System this question is addressed to Dr. Foumin you mentioned population as one of the things that you would have to face eventually down the road either double or tripling or institute that you work with has it partnered with any ASEAN department of health agencies either at the regional local or national level to address this with the hope that it would eventually reduce the number of consumers and the demand for energy consumption thank you very much I think it's very hard for me to address this I think besides China I have a clear policies on those but ASEAN do not have any population policy in terms of have to actually we do not have kind of restriction but of course I'm an economic background perhaps I may not fully I'm aware of the issue but I think there's a lot of public health programs in terms of providing more safe and kind of maternal inequalities and children and other but it's not really control population growth in itself so ASEAN actually there's a sector working on those but I work for ASEAN in East Asia and not really particular type on those issues but I'm aware that there are no any policy that is control in terms of population growth for ASEAN itself and therefore I before I ask you to join me in thanking our panelists I need to make an announcement so right after this panel ends we're going to break for lunch people are requested to go get their food very quickly