Social science energy research agenda for Southeast Asia

Asia Pacific Week 2010

Energy in Southeast Asia: a social science research agenda

Paper for the Asia-Pacific Week 2010
By: Mattijs Smits, PhD candidate Geography, School of Geosciences, University of Sydney

Abstract
This paper calls for more social science research into energy issues, to balance the dominant technoeconomic approach. The geographical focus of the paper is Southeast Asia, a region witnessing rapid growth and transitions of energy use, related to urbanisation, economic growth and integration in the world economy. However, the challenges related to energy cannot be understood without a more detailed analysis of issues such as the geography of cost and benefit, access and exclusion caused by energy grids, the political economy of reforms in the energy sector, and changing technologies and values in the context of modernity. A political ecology approach is presented as possible framework for the inclusion of these multi-disciplinary aspects related to energy and the study of it across different scales.

1 Introduction
Energy is central to human life and has greatly contributed to our current level of affluence and modernity (Nersesian, 2007; Smil, 1994). At the same time, many challenges facing the world are related to energy extraction and use: climate change, pollution, deforestation, etc. In Southeast Asia, the changes and challenges related to energy are moving fast and therefore creating more pressing and imminent problems. However, despite a lot of international attention for these kinds of issues and the promotion of alternative energy sources, the amount of energy from fossil fuels is still growing in most areas, especially in many countries in Southeast Asia. This growth is fuelled by population growth, access to cheap energy, increased and faster mobility, and increasing amounts of consumer goods. All these aspects can be seen as elements of a rapid process of modernisation and changing livelihoods, involving increased integration of people in the world economy and faster and increased flows of capital, goods, people and information. Besides the already mentioned environmental challenges, the challenges related to energy are also strongly related to access to power and resources, inequality and poverty. These impacts on equality are often influenced by specific spatial patterns and, in turn, produce certain spatial effects in their own right. However, the relation between energy and its social and cultural effects has received only sparse attention. The study of issues related to energy has mostly taken place in the technical sciences and engineering. It has received only fragmented attention from the social sciences and even then the only major social science involved in energy research is economics, making the field overwhelmingly dominated by technical approaches to an issue that touches upon so many aspects of society and the environment. To be sure, there are a large number of studies that touch upon energy related issues in one way or another. Examples of this would be in the field of science and technology, and in particular the study of large technical systems (Coutard et al., 2005; Hughes, 1983; Mayntz and Hughes, 1988; Summerton and Bradshaw, 1991) and the system innovation approach (Elzen et al., 2004; Kemp et al., 2007; Kern and Smith, 2008). Energy also features in some studies under the broad umbrella of environmental sociology (Lutzenhiser, 1994; Shove, 1997). Moreover, in urban

Mattijs Smits

Social science energy research agenda for Southeast Asia

Asia Pacific Week 2010

geography and urban political ecology, there is an increased interest in networks of infrastructure (Graham and Marvin, 2001; Swyngedouw, 2004). Finally, there have been some good anthropological and political ecology studies on energy-related issues, notably on issues surrounding large scale hydropower development in the Mekong area (Foran and Manorom, 2009; Hirsch, 1998). Although there is a wide range of disciplines which could constitute a broad energy research field, there have been very limited attempts to create the necessary linkages between these approaches and to place energy in the centre of the analysis (an exception here is Dooley, 2006). This article makes an attempt to bring some of the insights from the above mentioned literature together in order to do justice to the importance of energy issues in many aspects of our lives. Due to the sheer size and complexity of the topic, this paper will by no means be able to give an exhaustive overview. The environmental, economic, social and cultural context in which energy is being studied is crucial to any multidisciplinary study of energy. The geographical focus of this paper is Southeast Asia, a region where the challenges related to energy are very pronounced, as a result of large numbers of people, high cultural diversity, strong economic growth, and the risks of environmental degradation. Moreover, Southeast Asia is still in the midst of a rapid transition from traditional biomass based fuels to modern forms of energy, such as fossil fuels and electricity (Cavard, 1989). In this paper, most of the specific examples will be drawn from the Lao PDR and Thailand. The paper starts off with a quick overview of energy challenges in Southeast Asia, discussing energy growth and the share of energy demand and growth in each country. The article then goes on to highlight some issues underpinning these numbers, in particular the geographic, political, and sociological dimensions of energy use. Finally, it is suggested that a framework inspired by political ecology would be able to accommodate a multidisciplinary energy field, cutting across different levels of analysis.

2 Big picture of energy issues in Southeast Asia

2.1 General trends in energy use
Southeast Asia is a region seeing rapid energy growth (particularly in the urban centres), whilst at the same time it is still struggling to provide energy for its growing population. The projected energy growth in a recent report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB, 2009) can be seen in Figure 2. The demand for primary energy1 across the region is projected to rise at 2.8% per year until 2030, which means a doubling of the demand from 2005 levels. The total share of Southeast Asias primary energy use in the world will rise in the same period from 4% to 6%, underlining that this growth is much faster than in other areas of the world. Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam are and will remain the highest primary energy users in SEA, but other countries are also showing fast growth. In the Lao PDR, for example, demand is projected to grow over 5% per year until 2030.

Primary energy sources are those found in nature, without having undergone any transformation processes. Examples are fossil fuels, wind power, hydropower, solar energy, biomass, geothermal energy, etc.

Mattijs Smits

Social science energy research agenda for Southeast Asia

Asia Pacific Week 2010

Figure 2 - Primary energy demand by country in Southeast Asia (ADB, 2009)

Figure 1 - Projection of total primary energy demand in Southeast Asia. NRE=New and Renewable Energy (ADB, 2009)

Figure 1 shows the same graph of total primary energy use, but broken down for different types of fuels. According to these projections, the amount of new and renewable energy (NRE) will increase only slightly, whereas the share of coal and oil are set to increase rapidly. Coal will mainly be used to generate electricity whereas the strong growth in oil will fuel the transport sector, which accounts for more than half of the total projected growth. This strong growth will turn the region from being a net exporter in 2005, into a net importer in 2030 (ADB, 2009, p. x).

2.2 Energy related challenges

The main energy challenge for Southeast Asia is related to the strong expected primary energy demand growth. Economic growth, population growth, and urbanisation are the main drivers of this growing demand for energy. Energy sources such as fossil fuels, hydropower and renewable energy sources, are becoming harder to obtain and are likely to lead to increased environmental degradation and social conflict, as current experience indicates. The implementation of large scale hydropower, for instance, has been highly controversial, but has nonetheless seen a big resurgence over the last decade. In the Mekong region dozens of large dams are planned on rivers which provide vital functions for peoples livelihoods (Middleton et al., 2009). Another option currently under consideration, nuclear energy, poses large risks in terms of security, health and environmental risks, but is nonetheless being pursued by several governments in Southeast Asia. Furthermore, the fact that the region will become a net energy importer will pose great strains on the already stretched government budgets, as fossil fuels are often directly or indirectly subsidised. The latter is also one of the reasons why energy efficiency and alternative energy options have not been wellexploited in most countries in Southeast Asia (ADB, 2009, p. 57). The way the increased demand for energy manifests itself is likely to increase inequality and spatial differentiation, as most of the growth in energy demand takes place in urban areas. On the contrary, most of the production takes place in rural areas, which have already less access to energy. The continuing rural to urban migration is one of the main drivers of this growth, as are the increasing numbers of personal vehicles and appliances of urban dwellers. The number of cars, for example, in Indonesia and Thailand, is projected to grow more than 2.5% per year (ADB, 2009, p. 68). Yet, there are still large numbers of people without access to electricity in many countries in Southeast Asia. These challenges are usually well-covered in major reports on energy. However, the emphasis in

Mattijs Smits

Social science energy research agenda for Southeast Asia

Asia Pacific Week 2010

most reports is on the quantity of these problem and general explanatory factors rather than detailed social and political analyses.

3 Beyond the big picture

The statistics presented in the previous paragraphs are important and worrying, but do not tell the whole story. They leave many cultural, social, political and economic issues unaddressed. When moving beyond the big picture of total primary energy use and other statistics, there are many more questions than answers, even more so when considering the local social, cultural and political context in Southeast Asia. How to deal with question of sustainability in the light of ever increasing need for more energy in modernising states of Southeast Asia? Why do many initiatives to promote alternative energy or energy efficiency fail? How does energy relate to poverty and inequality? What can be done to make energy growth more equitable and sustainable? These are just a few of the big questions that should be addressed. Moreover, generalised answers will not suffice, because energy production and use are embedded in the wider culture of different countries and regions and should be tackled as such. Because these questions more often than not transcend scales and disciplinary boundaries, research should follow suit. The following section tries to identify some of the crossroads between energy and the social sciences, using examples from Southeast Asia. The emphasis will be on geographical, political and sociological aspects of energy use.

3.1 Geography of cost and benefit

Modern forms of energy such as oil, coal, gas and electricity, are often transported over long distances in comparison to traditional forms of energy such as biomass and traditional wind and water power. This means that the costs related to production, whether they are economic, social or environmental, are borne in a different place than where the energy is used. Hydropower development in Southeast Asia is a clear example of this. Locally, people often lose land and have to be resettled, whereas the main economic benefits of the electricity flow to private companies and national governments outside the local area. Typically, ethnic minorities in remote areas have to bear most of the costs and urban elites reap most of the benefits. Philip Hirsch called this spatial distribution the geography of cost and benefit (1997, p. 216). This concept helps to highlight the links between the production and consumption in energy from a geographical point of view. These kinds of effects also relate to other forms of electricity production, as well as to production and transport of fossil fuels.

3.2 Energy networks, access and exclusion

Modern forms of energy are distributed through networks, such as grids and pipelines. Although these types of infrastructure might seem to be neutral artefacts, they can have a strong impact on the distribution of resources and wealth. Access to grid electricity, for example, varies widely between and within countries. In Southeast Asia, the access rates vary widely, from 11.6% and 20.1% in Myanmar and Cambodia to (nearly) complete electrification in Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand (see Table 1). In total, there are about 160 million people without access to electricity in Southeast Asia (IEA, 2009).

Mattijs Smits

Social science energy research agenda for Southeast Asia On a national level, there is often a strong difference between people in urban and rural areas when it comes to access to electricity. In countries with low electrification rates, such as Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, often only the large urban centres and areas along the main roads are electrified. Although electricity can improve productivity and socio-economic indicators, such as health and education, high costs and weak political incentive make grid expansion slow in these countries. Alternatives, such as various off-grid and renewable energy technologies, are often even more expensive and cannot provide the same amount and stability of grid electricity. Although some alternative energy options make more economic sense in remote areas, they are often disadvantaged because of the direct or indirect2 subsidies for grid electrification.

Asia Pacific Week 2010

Table 1 Electrification rate of countries in Southeast Asia rate in 2005 (ADB, 2009)

Electrification rate (%) Brunei Darussalam 99.2 Cambodia 20.1 Indonesia 54.0 Lao PDR 45.0 Malaysia 97.8 Myanmar 11.3 Philippines 80.5 Singapore 100.0 Thailand 99.0 Viet Nam 84.2 Country

However, also within urban areas, energy-related infrastructure can reflect power relations and can exclude certain groups from access. In their book Splintering Urbanism, Graham and Marvin (2001) describe how exposure of infrastructural arrangements to capitalist influences can lead to strong social stratification and the development of, what they call, premium network places. These are the gated communities in the world of infrastructure, where the economically and politically powerful can access their own services, such as electricity networks, and exclude others. This separation of important users results in the (further) erosion of public provision of similar services in other areas. Similar examples can be found in the book Social Power and the Urbanization of Water by Erik Swyngedouw (2004). He analyses the situation in Guayaquil, Mexico, where after privatisation of the public water utility, the people in poorer areas are forced to buy water from water vendors at a much higher price than those connected to mains water. These authors show the politics behind changing networks of infrastructure and how this influences access and exclusion to energy services.

3.3 States, markets and the political economy of energy

The changing role of the state and the private sector in relation to energy is another important area of research. The section above briefly touched upon the issue of privatisation, which leads into a debate of the role of energy in relation to the role of the state and markets. Since the 1990s, there has been a drive towards neoliberal reforms of the energy sector under pressure of the World Bank and the IMF (Williams and Dubash, 2004a). Their main aim has been to cut public sector subsidies and reduce inefficiencies by introducing free market mechanisms. Although this agenda of privatisation and reform has been extensively criticised, in particular in the form of structural adjustment loans and policies, the process has by no means come to a standstill. Indeed, most countries have undergone some kind of energy sector reform over the past few decades. In the power sector, reform usually means a combination of the following policy measures: privatisation or

Indirect subsidies are mainly in the form of the construction of transmission and distribution lines of electricity. In case these are financed by grants or soft-loans, the costs are often not passed on to the endusers.

Mattijs Smits

Social science energy research agenda for Southeast Asia

Asia Pacific Week 2010

corporatisation of state-owned utilities, allowing private companies to sell and/or distribute power, restructuring and splitting of vertically integrated utilities, establishing competitive markets, and drafting laws and regulations to facilitate these kinds of measures. The consequences of power sector reforms cannot easily be underestimated. As James Williams and Navroz Dubash, the editors of a special issue on the political economy of electricity reform in Asia in Pacific Affairs (2004), argue [f]ar from a dry techno-economic calculation, electricity reform is often an arena of conflict between competing interests that are of fundamental importance to society (2004b, p. 404). However, these changes almost never result in textbook electricity markets. Rather, the history of the utilities and the resulting power relations often strongly influence the trajectory and shape of reforms. This in turn has a strong impact on who will be the main beneficiaries and who will bear the costs of reform. In Thailand, for example, Chris and Chom Greacen (2004) argue that reforms have led to a peculiar kind of privatisation designed to raise capital for state-owned utilities, to provide high shareholder returns, and to increase salaries for state-owned utility employees, especially upper management (p. 517). These examples emphasise the importance of the political economy of energy production and distribution in Southeast Asia. Moreover, they highlight that the provision of energy is not a neutral act and influences the relationship of the state and its citizens in many ways. In some cases, projects related to the provision of electricity can be seen as, what J.C. Scott (1998) calls, a process towards simplification and legibility, making it possible for the state to control and manipulate its citizens. An example would be grid extension projects in the Lao PDR, which, together with the provision of other services and infrastructure, lead to important changes in the settlement pattern of people in less accessible areas. Because electricity is only provided along and close to main roads, this type of planning can lead to the voluntary or involuntary resettlement of villages. Baird and Shoemaker (2007) see this as a deliberate strategy of the government to incorporate people in upland areas in the dominant Lao culture. Moreover, the authors own research shows that some market-driven decentralised electrification options in Laos are neglected because centralised options are championed (Smits and Bush, 2010).

3.4 Technology, values and modernity

The use of energy, in its many forms and disguises, shapes our daily life in many ways. The last few decades in particular have seen a flood of new and improved technologies and appliances based on modern energy forms: televisions, computers, faster and more numerous transport options (notably low-cost aviation), etc. These aspects of what can be considered to be modernity, are usually linked to individual or household usage. Again, the rate of change related to modern energy use that is currently taking place in Southeast Asia is much faster than in Europe and North America. Nowadays, even in rural areas, the number of televisions, satellite dishes and other forms of electricity and oil-based technologies is substantial and rising quickly. Therefore, it is not only necessary to look at energy as shaped by state government, utilities and international organisations, but also from the point of view of the user. Users are the other side of the equation, whom are often forgotten or neglected in technical and economically oriented studies of energy. After all, users decide upon the way they organise their lives and therefore the flows of energy. Thus we could consider a sociology of energy, focusing on changing values and routines of energy use in peoples daily lives (Lutzenhiser, 1993; Lutzenhiser, 1994; Shove, 1997, 2004). On a

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Social science energy research agenda for Southeast Asia

Asia Pacific Week 2010

more abstract level, these debates touch upon many issues of what constitutes modernity and possibly post-modernity or second modernity (Bauman, 1997; Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1990). An example of changes in technology and values, which is very relevant for Southeast Asia, is the increasing importance of air-conditioning. Air-conditioning is a technology designed to improve comfort in places that are too hot. Nowadays, however, coldness itself seems to have become a symbol of prosperity and modernity, rather than its original objective of comfort. The result is that in many hotels in Southeast Asia the temperature is very low, maybe even to the point that it starts to challenge the idea of comfort. As air-conditioning is now widely and cheaply available, the value of coldness, and air conditioners, are spreading. In terms of energy, this poses a major challenge, because air-conditioning creates strong peaks in energy demand. Because electricity grids are designed to accommodate peak loads rather than the total amount of electricity needed, this development drives the need for the construction of new power plants. In similar fashion, Elizabeth Shove (2004) explores the interrelations between technology and social values by showing how our perceptions about cleanliness and washing machines have co-evolved over time.

4 Approaches, methods and tools

There are no tailored methods and tools to tackle this large and relatively unexplored field. However, there are some promising approaches to be found in other fields that could provide a useful framework for this type of study. The main approach that will be discussed here is political ecology. The inherent multidisciplinary makes political ecology an excellent candidate for these type of studies. Its focus on social justice and human-nature interactions also matches well with the energy issues raised in this paper. Another main feature is the study across (geographical) scales, thereby making it possible to link explanations from household energy use up to high-level climate change talks (Zimmerer and Bassett, 2003). Finally, the critical attitude towards the production of knowledge, whether it be local or scientific, can help to break down the dominant techno-economic paradigm (Forsyth, 2003; Stott and Sullivan, 2000). The study of discourses, or the way in which energy issues are raised, explained and presented, is a particularly fruitful direction and used widely in political ecology and related fields (Dryzek, 2005; Hajer, 1995; Peet and Watts, 2004) The methods used in multidisciplinary studies of energy will have to be able to cover material as well as discursive elements of energy systems and be able to cover a broad range of scales, going well beyond the energy statistics presented at the beginning of this paper. These are merely a starting point and should be subject to scrutiny themselves, in particular in Southeast Asia, where data is often limited, difficult to collect, and incorporates biases. Therefore, additional methods to uncover the discursive elements involved in energy planning could be in-depth interview and critical analysis of policy documents as presented by national government, development banks, NGOs, etc. Sociological and anthropological methods can be employed to get an in-depth understanding of the ways in which people deal with energy in their daily lives. A good example of this is a paper by Mette Jensen on the use of automobiles, which discusses the paradox between modern lifestyles and the negative environmental impacts of mobility through the use of in-depth interviews (Jensen, 2006).

5 Conclusion

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Social science energy research agenda for Southeast Asia

Asia Pacific Week 2010

The rapid changes and problems related to energy use in Southeast Asia, but the rest of the world as well highlight the need to study energy in a critical, multi-disciplinary way, which is capable of connecting multiple scales of analysis. The fact that energy has become so normal and universally available in many parts of the world creates a false sense of continuity and permanence. These ideas are perpetuated by abstract and techno-economical paradigms and political power associated with controlling flows of energy. Therefore, this paper calls for a critical inquiry into the use, technology and values around energy which are changing, and thereby shaping our options as individuals, and society and the environment at large.

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Asia Pacific Week 2010

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