The 9^th ASEAN Energy Regulatory Network (AERN) Meeting was held from 4–5 July 2018 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The meeting was attended by regulators from Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Prior to this meeting, back-to-back meetings of the AERN Working Group (AWG) 1 and 2 were held in the same venue, whereby the regulators reviewed the topic about technical and regulatory harmonisation (AWG1) as well as legal and commercialisation (AWG2).

Furthermore, the 9^th AERN Meeting also marks the appointment of ASEAN Secretariat as the permanent secretariat of AERN. ACE was responsible to deliver updates on ASEAN Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation (APAEC) activities to the regulators. Accordingly, ACE’s representatives, Mr. Visal Veng and Mr. Aloysius Damar Pranadi briefed the forum on the updates of ACE’s activities related to AERN, such as:

1. Pathways for Energy Interconnection in ASEAN – Accelerating energy transition for sustainable and resilient societies under the collaboration with Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization (GEIDCO) and United Nations Economic and Social Commision for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP);
2. Feasibility Study on Multilateral Power Trade in collaboration with the International Energy Agency (IEA);
3. ASEAN Interconnection Masterplan Study III;
4. the USAID Clean Power Asia programme.The forum also conferred about ACE’s preparation to collaborate with AERN in its regional activities. During the discussion, ACE proposed an idea to consider renewable energy regulations as part of AERN’s agenda in the near future.

In addition to updates on the AERN’s activities, Cambodia presented their latest progress on solar photovoltaics regulatory framework. In this session, a number of ACE’s publications: the 5^th ASEAN Energy Outlook 2015-2040; ASEAN Feed-in-Tariff Mechanism Report; ASEAN Power Cooperation Report, Renewable Energy Outlook for ASEAN; and Levelised Cost of Electricity of Selected Renewable Technologies in the ASEAN Member States were presented as the key references for the ASEAN Member States in formulating the regulatory framework. (VV.  Featured photo credit:  EAC)