Powering a safe and just renewable energy transition

About this event

Southeast Asia is scaling renewable energy at speed, and it should. But megawatts, mobilized capital, and avoided emissions do not tell us whether the transition is shaping a better future system – one that protects people and ecosystems, keeps energy affordable and reliable, shares costs and benefits fairly, earns social license, and takes responsibility for materials across their life cycle. This session treats ecological safety and social justice as the foundations for future systems that create enduring energy resilience. It draws lessons from the Responsible Energy Initiative - Philippines (REI PH), a multi-sector, collaborative action platform that Forum for the Future (Forum) and local partners convene to advance responsible renewable energy production and deployment. Thailand offers a contrasting market, with its own debate over imported power and gas dependence. Using both countries as complementary lenses through which to view the energy transition, the session moves from diagnosis to design and convenes the change-makers who could carry this work into new national contexts in Southeast Asia. The objectives of the session are: › Reframe ecological safety and social justice as the basis of a legitimate, resilient, and durable energy transition, not a compliance overlay. › Show a working model: what REI PH has learned in the Philippines, and how it could adapt to Thailand and beyond. › Identify concrete risks to avoid, enabling conditions, and near-term actions. › Convene the partners and funders who could extend safe and just RE programs to new national contexts.