The Indo-Pacific in 2050: Alternative Energy Scenarios and Security
The demand for commodities in 2050 in the Indo-Pacific will set the background for the security environment in a region that will continue to host more than half of the world’s producers and consumers. The year 2050 marks a looming milestone in the international effort to realize the much vaunted ‘energy transition’ to generating electricity from renewables and electrifying transportation. How that transition unfolds will fundamentally reshape the flow of energy and materials into and out of the region. Over the next decades the nations of the Indo-Pacific will strive to expand and modernize their energy and transport systems to meet the needs of their citizens and execute on their commitments to substantially reduce, and even eliminate, their carbon emissions by 2050. For some nations, like Japan and South Korea, changes will involve replacing energy technologies in an already mature system. For nations like India and Indonesia, and even China, changes will involve adding significantly to current capacity as they provide basic services to more of their citizens over the next decades. In all cases, changes will affect national living standards, national dependencies on energy and minerals, and national portfolios of strategic assets.
The energy technologies that succeed in the competition for dominance by 2050 will create new patterns of demand for fuels and minerals in the region. For instance, a peaceful Indo-Pacific that relies on nuclear energy and natural gas and hydrogen in 2050 could see demand for coal drop precipitously. In this prosperous scenario, innovation continues for both renewable energy technologies as well as hydrocarbon technologies. By contrast, should an atmosphere of hostility and suspicion prevail among the nations of the Indo-Pacific, amidst weak economic growth and stagnant technology innovation, the region could see coal demand rise sharply. If, in another scenario, the nations of the Indo-Pacific meet their commitments to electric vehicles by 2050 they would drastically reduce the region’s dependence on oil. The reduced hydrocarbon demand and associated tanker traffic would be balanced by increased demand for the bulk minerals needed to build the infrastructure for an electrified transportation system, including power distribution and energy storage.
How much value the nations of the region decide to place on reducing atmospheric carbon emissions will strongly influence which new energy projects will succeed in 2050. If technology decisions at the national level are shaped, but not dominated, by concerns over carbon dioxide emissions, one would expect to see continued innovation in nuclear and legacy hydrocarbon technologies alongside more focused development of green energy technologies for applications where their advantages are evident. In a world governed by Laissez-faire principles, with minimal governmental interference in markets, the efficiencies offered by each technology could potentially be exploited to lower overall emissions and resource consumption for energy. Alternatively, a world where centralized international mandates favor climate-inspired technologies might restrict research and development to those technologies. In that world, government intervention could be required indefinitely to satisfy the steady growth in global demand for the minerals used for batteries and other electrical infrastructure, and, in that world, China stands uniquely positioned in the early 2020’s to benefit from providing those raw materials and products.
Changes in the national energy systems across the Indo-Pacific region will also influence the geography of trade routes for mineral and energy commodities. Assuming that hydrocarbons retain a sizable share of the energy mix in 2050 could mean that the network of pipelines that now supply oil and gas from deep in continental Asia to China may well grow. Shipping routes from the Russian Arctic into the Pacific Ocean, expected to continue opening up in the next decades, could carry growing tanker traffic to a string of new liquid natural gas (LNG) facilities dotting the Indo-Pacific coastline. By contrast, a world where nations strictly respond to climate mandates would lack incentives to build out or even maintain hydrocarbon infrastructure. Instead, nations could cooperate in developing the infrastructure to harvest renewable energy and ship electricity directly across the great expanses of Asia using cross-border, and even continent-wide, electric grids. Depending on the scenario, potential changes in built energy infrastructure would alter the current map of strategic trade routes and choke points within the Indo-Pacific region and influence those beyond.
The level of cooperation among the nations of the Indo-Pacific and interior Asia will shape the next stages of energy and transport infrastructure development. How the next generations in these nations respond to historical tensions ranging from ancient to post-colonial resentments, will influence how the future unfolds. The boost in intra-Asian cooperation in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, seems to augur well for the continued development of existing intra-Asian networks, such as the energy pipelines connecting Russia and China. In an atmosphere of continued cooperation in the next decades other infrastructure projects across the region would similarly benefit. Pipeline networks in Central Asia and the Caucasus could open up those nations to international energy markets, allowing them more autonomy from Russia and China. Railway projects could also connect Central Asia to the nations of the Indo-Pacific and across Eurasia all the way to southern and northern entry points to the EU. In South Asia, new energy pipelines and long-distance high voltage cables could link India with nearby energy sources in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. Similarly, with sufficient coordination and capital, the nations of maritime Southeast Asia along with Australia could use long distance high voltage electric cables to exploit renewable energy sources and connect their energy systems with one another and the mainland. The cables, as well as the extensive offshore wind farms they integrate, would present new ocean-based vulnerabilities and navigational obstructions from a security perspective. Multilateral cooperation is critical to completing many energy transition projects by 2050. At the same time, nationalism remains young and vigorous in many parts of the Indo-Pacific region and will certainly play some role as nations and peoples pursue their own interests in the future.
Entering the 2020’s, much of the new transport and energy infrastructure being built across Asia is supported by China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI is recognized as providing the benefits of giant modern infrastructure, especially for poor and emerging economies. Examples include new railway hubs in Laos and Kyrgyzstan and hydroelectric dams in Myanmar and Cambodia. How current BRI energy and transport projects will influence the security environment in 2050 will depend on whether the emerging network ends up serving the needs of the global community at large or primarily serves the needs of its sponsors. A decade after its inauguration in 2013, the BRI has begun to engender resentment as the costs to host countries come due in the form of debt payments or favorable diplomatic, military and trade concessions to China. From a global perspective, the most desired legacy of BRI projects would be an infrastructure network that preserves free and open trade across the world’s oceans and land routes rather than projects that promote only bi-lateral trading relationships within a self-contained Asia.
One of the great unknowns of the next decades is how renewable energy and electrified transportation technologies themselves will perform should they approach and surpass the majority share of the total energy market. Nations that develop and support nascent markets for new green technologies would at some point need to reduce that support as the markets for those technologies start to mature. As they become the dominant source of primary energy, the ability of renewables to function reliably at the scale of national economies, outside the context of ample back-up power, would also be tested. A broad range of consumers would need to embrace the new technologies. While national myths and political indoctrination can persist beyond the span of a human generation, technologies that actually succeed with consumers must work, and must deliver value, in order to endure. Governments can attempt to use policy to change a technology’s economic value, or to change its performance by industrial policies. Ultimately though they cannot mandate what technologies will work, give value, and succeed in the marketplace.
The world of 2050 will likely feature an industrial energy system that is some hybrid of traditional and ‘green’ technologies. The emerging system will be more highly electrified while continuing to include substantial hydrocarbon infrastructure. Current national and international mandates favor a thorough replacement of energy and transport technologies, but existing technologies have fundamental advantages that may prove too valuable to abandon over time. The energy system of 2050 will thus include a larger renewable and EV sector that combines with what might be anything from a shrunken to an expanded global hydrocarbons sector. In many cases, new technologies will add to, rather than replace, the energy demand associated with current technologies.
Considering scenarios for the nations of the Indo-Pacific region based on their choice of technologies forces thinking through practical outcomes. Exploring different possible trajectories for national development in this key global region allows for strategies to anticipate and avoid future conflicts. Grounding these assessments based on long term national development needs, technology decisions, and historical dispositions, instead of more proximate political factors allows for better strategic foresight.
Iddo Wernick, Program for the Human Environment, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY USA
