Following the 25^th Annual Meeting of Renewable Energy Sub-sector Network (RE-SSN) held in June 2018 in Bangkok, Thailand, the ASEAN Member States (AMS) recognised that RE Data Explorer as a regional tool has a very vital role to play, especially in supporting the development RE policy and providing necessary information for potential investment in the region. In this regard, ACE in partnership with National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) of U.S. Department of Energy jointly conducted the research in order to adopt NREL’s RE Data Explorer (https://data.re-explorer.org) for an ASEAN-wide version and integrate it into  ASEAN Energy Database System (AEDS) (http://aeds.aseanenergy.org).

A workshop was organised by ACE in Vientiane, Lao PDR, on 13 November 2018 with the main objective to comprehensively review the adaptability of NREL’s RE Data Explorer to ASEAN-wide RE Data Explorer, so ASEAN policymakers could benefit from the data to design and implement RE policies. This workshop was attended by the Renewable Energy Sub-Sector Network (RE-SSN) representatives from Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Vietnam.

In this one-day workshop, Dr Nathan Lee from NREL and the AMS representatives were engaged in extensive discussions to understand the ASEAN-wide RE Data Explorer as an instrument for policy planning, economic analysis, and technical potential analysis. All participants were actively involved by analysing their home countries’ RE potentials and economic analysis using this tool, as well as providing inputs to improve the RE Data Explorer so that it can present accurate data and information in each AMS. (ADP)