May 20, 2026
At the ASEAN for the Peoples Week 2026 in Cebu, The Climate Reality Project Philippines joined civil society organizations, policymakers, and community leaders in advancing a critical regional message; that ASEAN’s energy transition must be rooted in climate diplomacy, regional solidarity, and people-centred resilience.
Organized by the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI), the forum was held alongside the 48th ASEAN Summit. It was designed as a platform to strengthen civil society participation in regional decision-making amidst intensifying geopolitical tensions, fossil fuel volatility, and deepening climate risks.
For Climate Reality Philippines, this reflects the core of its climate diplomacy work; building bridges among governments, communities, businesses, and advocates to advance ambitious, science-based, and socially just climate action.
Across the various discussions in Cebu, one question shaped the conversations: how can ASEAN protect its people from global shocks that continue to destabilize livelihoods, energy systems, and local economies?
If the region wants to build a resilient, innovative, dynamic, and people-centered community by 2045, then its energy transition must be shaped by ASEAN centrality, binding regional mechanisms, and climate diplomacy that puts people ahead of profits.
The convening stressed that without stronger regional coordination, ASEAN economies remain vulnerable to unpredictable fossil fuel markets, external political pressures, and corporate control over energy systems. It also highlighted that the West Asia oil situation can be felt more closely by people on the ground— rising fuel prices affect national supply chains, stressing the need for a cheaper source of power which can be produced domestically.
This is why renewed attention to the ASEAN Power Grid (APG) and the ASEAN Petroleum Security Agreement (APSA) as potential anchors for deeper regional integration was a welcome update.
The APSA aims to enhance energy security in the region through securing supply of oil and oil products, minimizing the region’s exposure to energy crises. Meanwhile, the APG envisions an interconnected electricity grid for ASEAN by 2045, reducing power costs and accelerating decarbonization in the region. Both could reduce external energy dependency and reinforce ASEAN’s internal cohesion.
Despite these, caution is necessary when pushing for interconnectedness, and a thorough understanding of national and local contexts is recommended. In the Philippines, even upgrading domestic transmission lines means high upfront costs on the national level, while frequent typhoons, floods, and earthquakes threaten connectivity and energy access in local communities.
With these local contexts in mind, these initiatives are not merely technical infrastructure projects; they are mechanisms for regional resilience and energy sovereignty when implemented with Southeast Asian communities in mind. By enabling ASEAN countries to share energy resources and stabilize supply, they can help shield communities from recurring oil price shocks and external market inconsistency.
Furthermore, discussions flagged the risk that ASEAN’s renewable energy transition could lead to large companies capturing the most lucrative opportunities while communities are excluded. Simultaneous to the calls for a renewable energy shift was also a just transition for the people of ASEAN, which requires attention to the social and economic impacts of fossil fuel phaseout, particularly for communities dependent on these industries.
Analysis from the Climate Policy Institute Indonesia showed that coal, oil, and natural gas still attract the majority of energy financing in Southeast Asia despite their growing economic and geopolitical risks. Participants stressed that understanding where climate finance flows, and where it does not, is essential to building a credible and equitable transition pathway for the region.
For Climate Reality Philippines and many civil society organizations present, renewable energy was framed not only as a climate solution, but as a strategic pathway toward greater national and regional resilience. Solar energy, for example, can be deployed by local communities, cooperatives, households, and MSMEs, not just by large utilities or multinational companies. This decentralization strengthens community resilience while reducing dependence on volatile imported fuels.
But the convening also warned against allowing the renewable energy transition to replicate the same extractive and unequal systems associated with fossil fuel industries. Left entirely to market forces, the transition risks becoming concentrated in the hands of large corporations while frontline communities remain excluded from decision-making that affects their lives.
Overall, Climate Reality Philippines’ engagement in this convening through its climate diplomacy work is especially relevant here, because it gives civil society a way to press for climate action by linking local realities to national, regional, and even global decision-making platforms.
The more critical lesson from Cebu is that ASEAN’s energy transition will only be credible if it is regional, coordinated, and people-first. As emphasized by Climate Reality Philippines during the four-day convening, “what does it truly take for ASEAN to put its people first? Resiliency. A resilient regional bloc prioritizes the security of its people above all else; that means a farmer in Central Mindanao or a fisherfolk in Mekong Delta no longer pay the price of surging electricity, fuel, and food because the region cannot compete economically or shield itself from external shocks. ASEAN has the collective power, innate resources, strategic geopolitical leverage, and its people to negotiate and decide as one united bloc”.
The regional bloc was built to help its people navigate a turbulent world. The task now is to ensure that the region’s institutions and climate diplomacy efforts actually do that.
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