Modernisation on the cards for Asia, says Gentrack

Published in Enlit Asia on August 29, 2023. By Natalie Chew.

Asia is on a changing trajectory, according to Geoff Childs.

As the General Manager of Gentrack, he is privy to the ebb and flow of an ever-changing energy landscape – and has made some interesting observations.

“Today, energy retail has to completely reinvent itself,” he explains. “Everyone in Asia has switched on, so to speak, and is looking to modernise their software; they need to redefine their business models, and they need to find themselves.”

The bulk of the Asian market lies in what Childs dubs “gen-tailers” – namely, businesses that own generation power stations, manage grid metering, and own their own retail businesses.

“The governments have come and said, ‘Let’s go for net-zero in 2050’, and I think pretty much every country in Asia has said that they’re going to shut down their coal-fired power stations and move to gas.”

Gas is better than coal when it comes to carbon emissions, shares Childs, but even then, it is only slightly so, and the goal is to move from gas to purely renewable energy. Thus far, large-scale efforts have been made to push the needle by constructing industrial-scale solar and wind farms.

“The good news is that globally, we’ve doubled the amount of renewable energy that we deliver; Unfortunately, the amount of electricity and energy that we consume as a population has also doubled. So, what’s happened is that there’s been a shift in realisation that the onus has traditionally been on generation to build the renewables, but it’s not enough,” said Childs.

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