(The Staronline/ANN)--AN estimated US$5.5 trillion of investment in power generating capacity in Asia-Pacific is expected between 2018 and 2050, with China being the biggest renewable energy player in the region.

According to a recent report by Kenanga Research, China (US$2.7 trillion or 24%) and India (US$1.6 trillion or 14%) are the two biggest investors for power generating assets, especially for wind generation, which exceeds solar generation.

“Meanwhile, South-East Asia will be the largest growth market in Asia after China and India with an estimated investment of US$500bil or 4.3% globally. With the quest to reduce pollution, coal generation assets have started to be phased out in the Western world and we expect the Asian region to follow suit.

“There are reasons for using alternative energy besides environment issues, such as the levilised cost of electricity being cheaper than conventional energy and cost forecasts for start-up in wind, solar and storage (the renewable trinity) are showing a declining trend.”

“Since the new government took over office in May last year, the Energy Minister has been promoting green energy in which she set an ambitious renewable energy target of 20% of electricity generation mix by 2025 from the current level of 2%.

“In order to achieve such target, a strong growth of alternative energy installations is required over the next five years, amounting to 400 megawatts (MW) to 500MW new capacity each year.”

Kenanga Research also says this presents a good opportunity for solar players, as this alternative energy is suitable for the country due to its tropical geographical location which has irradiance of more than 3.6 to 3.9 sun-hours a day.

The research house adds that more large scale solar (LSS) in the future will boost generation growth.

The bidding submissions of the 500MW LSS3 ended earlier this month was indeed overwhelming.