Elite Cognitive Dissonance and the Asian Energy Disruption
Notes from the Field — Singapore & Indonesia, May 2026
You’d think this would be the talk of every energy-related conference on the planet this month.
Something remarkable happened in April. For the first time in history, wind and solar generated more electricity than gas across the entire planet. Not in a country. Not in a region. Globally. In April 2026, renewables produced 531 terawatt-hours of electricity — 54 TWh more than gas plants worldwide.¹
I was in Singapore the same week that data dropped from the amazing folk at Ember. I was at a couple of parallel conferences — a gathering of finance and philanthropy leaders convened to think seriously about Asia’s energy and development future. It’s a good event, filled with genuinely smart, well-intentioned people. And yet, sitting in the room, I had the distinct feeling of being at a party where no one had looked out the window in a while.
Solar and batteries were discussed — but gingerly, as though it were a promising experiment rather than a $500 billion global industry already accruing disproportionately to Asia. The conversation had the polite tone of a seminar, not the urgency of people grappling with a structural revolution happening around them in real time.
And then came the moment that crystallized everything.
Nukes for Humanity, Drones for the UAE
The same day I spoke on a panel (where, I confess, it felt mildly impolite to mention the war impacting everyone outside in terms of inflation, anxiety etc), the Rockefeller Foundation and Temasek Trust jointly launched a new nuclear energy initiative. The rationale was energy security — clean, firm power for an uncertain world.
It was the day after the UAE’s nuclear facility came under drone threat from fighters in Iraq, in a war that began, ostensibly, over Iran’s access to nuclear technology.²
I want to be gentle here, because the people behind that initiative are serious and their goals may be sincere. But the irony was almost architectural. In a room full of people talking about firm, secure, “always-on” clean energy — the most prominent nuclear plant in West Asia nearly became a casualty of a conflict rooted in the very geopolitics of nuclear ambition.
Meanwhile, the sun was shining outside. Freely. On everyone. That great big reactor in the sky!
Across the Strait, a Different Conversation
A few days later I crossed to Batam Island, Indonesia — less than an hour from Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands by ferry, but a world apart in atmosphere. There, I visited a new photovoltaic module factory run by Haitai, a Chinese OEM that has made a significant investment in Indonesia’s manufacturing future. The bet is simple: the Indonesian solar market is about to explode, and being close to that market — with Indonesia’s 8% economic growth story and newfound policy appetite — makes industrial sense.
No one on the factory floor was debating whether solar would work. They were building it.
This is the cognitive dissonance I want to name clearly, and kindly: the gap between what the financial and public policy elite are discussing in air-conditioned conference rooms, and what is actually being constructed in factories, fields, and rooftops across Asia and beyond. The discussion lags the reality by several years — and that gap has consequences for how capital flows, and at what cost, how policy is shaped, and how quickly the benefits of this transition reach the people who need them most.
What’s Actually Happening Out Here
Let me take you on a potted tour. Because the data is extraordinary, and it deserves to be said plainly. But this is only the tip of the iceberg from the last couple of week’s news flow:
Philippines. After declaring a national energy emergency in March, the government activated a whole-of-government mandate for energy security. Regulatory bottlenecks for renewables are being dismantled. Rooftop solar inquiries are up 500% since the crisis began. This is not a green ambition. This is a survival response.³
Vietnam. The country has revised its power development plan, targeting a minimum of 47% renewable electricity generation by 2030. Vietnam is already the region’s largest EV market, and its government has expanded EV tax incentives in direct response to the Iran War’s impact on fuel prices.³ HSBC recently extended $4 billion in clean-tech financing to Chinese firms, much of it flowing into EV and solar exports to Vietnam and ASEAN.⁴
Indonesia. Beyond the factory I visited in Batam, the government is engineering a broad fiscal shift — expanding EV incentives with a target of 2 million electric cars and 12 million electric two-wheelers on the road by 2030. With the world’s largest nickel reserves, Indonesia is positioning itself to replace diesel imports with a domestic battery ecosystem. The logic is national sovereignty as much as climate policy.³ We’ve also talked about their 100GW solar archipelago plans.
Thailand. Advanced its net zero target by 15 full years, to 2050. Solar generation surged 72% in 2025. The country is adding 50 GW of renewables and 14 GW of energy storage by 2037. A major 1 GW module supply deal between China’s GCL-SI and Thailand’s Getz Energy was just signed to support that buildout.⁵ ⁶
Singapore itself. Already scaled solar to 1.7 GW and is executing multi-gigawatt cross-border subsea clean electricity cables from Indonesia, Cambodia, and Vietnam — with a requirement that developers bundle storage at origin for 24/7 firm power delivery. Singapore, to its credit, is acting. The conference, perhaps, just needed a bigger window.³
We already know China and India — the two largest energy consumers in Asia — reached a historic tipping point together in 2025. For the first time, fossil fuel generation fell in both countries simultaneously: China down 0.9%, India down 3.3%.³ These are not small numbers. These are inflection points.
EVs are Part and Parcel of This
Electricity and mobility are increasingly the same conversation. The IEA’s Global EV Outlook, released this month, projects 23 million EV sales globally in 2026 — nearly 30% of all new cars sold worldwide. Southeast Asia is expected to double EV sales this year. Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia — all moving fast. Kuala Lumpur and Penang already beat their EV charging infrastructure deployment targets.⁷ ⁸
The spillover from solar into batteries into electric vehicles into electric everything else is not a future scenario. It is the present tense of industrial Asia.
It’s Not Just Asia
Africa’s doing it too with it’s first 10GW PV import month (I’ll save that for another post). For those who wonder if this is an emerging-market story — a note from Europe:
This week’s data shows rooftop solar demand has more than doubled since the Iran War began in February. One British energy company reported April sales ten times higher than a year ago. A German solar wholesaler tripled net sales in March to nearly €70 million. E.ON, Europe’s largest energy network operator, says customer requests have nearly doubled year-on-year.
The pattern is the same as 2022 — a geopolitical shock reprices energy risk overnight, and households rush to insulate themselves. As one executive put it: “We view the spike in demand as a structural shift that current geopolitical events are accelerating, not creating.”⁹
And Australia: right next door to Southeast Asia, the land down under has become perhaps the world’s fastest adopter of distributed solar and batteries. The Australian Energy Regulator has just confirmed the biggest power price cuts in years — a direct consequence of rooftop solar flooding the grid with cheap electrons and storing them behind the meter with batteries.¹⁰
The system is working. The technology is delivering. The costs are falling. This is not a trial.
So What?
China’s solar exports are hitting all time records while oil wars drag on.¹¹ This is not charity. It is commerce. It is nations choosing energy security, economic agency, and lower costs over the inherited architecture of fossil fuel dependency.
Here is the thing I want to say to the brilliant people in Singapore’s conference rooms — and I say it with genuine affection: the transition is not coming. It is here. The countries of South and Southeast Asia are not waiting for a cleaner technology to arrive at scale. They are building it, deploying it, and in some cases, leading the world in doing so. They are following China and India, whose solar success is already visible in their generation statistics.
When the US and other Western economies fully reckon with what has shifted — when the fossil fuel dependency that has structured their geopolitics for a century begins to visibly crumble — it will be the next shock emanating from Trump’s war. Not because the change happened suddenly, but because so many simply weren’t watching.
You don’t need to be among those who missed it.
If you want to stay close to this story as it unfolds across Asia and the world — follow ProElectrica on Substack and tell a friend. Share it. And follow FutureKeepers. Like this post and send to someone who needs to see. The window is open. The sun is doing its thing. Shine on!
Danny Kennedy is a co-founder of FutureKeepers and a Secretary of the Global Solar Council. He writes from the field.
Notes
Ember / Electrek: “In a first, wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026.” electrek.co
Reports on drone attacks near UAE’s Barakah nuclear plant, May 2026 (widely covered regional and international press).
Country-level data compiled by Assaad Razzouk; regional policy tracking via Global Renewables Alliance and national government announcements, May 2026.
HSBC $4B clean-tech financing: VnExpress Kinh doanh
GCL-SI / Getz Energy 1 GW module supply deal: PV-Tech
Thailand’s solar generation and net zero timeline: national energy planning documents and regional press, 2025–2026.
IEA Global EV Outlook 2026: Electrek — 23 million EVs in 2026, 30% global share, Southeast Asia doubling.
Malaysia EV charging: Kuala Lumpur and Penang beat EVSE deployment goals. Electrek
European rooftop solar demand surge: Reuters reporting across Germany, Britain, Netherlands; LinkedIn summary via Skander Garroum. SMA Solar shares up 50% since Iran War began. Reuters
Australia power price cuts confirmed by AER: MSN/AER report
China solar exports at all-time record in March 2026: Mongabay
hot fire Danny! so well done