The Clean, Affordable, and Secure Energy for Southeast Asia Programme (CASE), being implemented by GIZ in collaboration with the Energy Policy and Planning Office and its partners, organised a two-day workshop on “Long Term Energy Scenarios and Co-benefit Study: LEAP Training and Assumption Validation” on 17-18 March 2022 at Pathumwan Princess Hotel, Bangkok. This event was led by the Energy Research Institute (ERI), Chulalongkorn University together with CASE’s energy transition expert partners, namely Agora Energiewende, the Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI), and the New Climate Institute (NCI).

The content of the first day’s workshop introduced the Low Emissions Analysis Platform (LEAP), a modeling tool for energy, environmental, and economic analysis. The aim was to provide participants with fundamental information on and instruct them in the LEAP programme, which can be used for future energy scenario modeling and energy demand analysis.

The second day focused on a Long-term Energy Scenario’s results (LTES) validation activity. This activity demonstrated a hands-on example and triggered discussions on Thailand’s energy demand system. It helped provide a foundation that supports the ongoing formulation of the National Energy Plan (NEP) and other related energy plans being undertaken by agencies, including the Energy Policy and Planning Office (EPPO), the main political partner of CASE.

The national energy policymaking agencies as well as the leading energy operation office, including the EPPO, the Permanent Secretary’s Office of the Ministry of Energy, the Department of Alternative Energy Development, and Efficiency (DEDE) and PTT Public Company Limited attended the workshop. There were over 40 participants, all of whom expressed great interest in both the LEAP training and LTES’s result validation activity.

The highlight was the LTES’s result validation on the second day, which was conducted on the two proposed energy scenarios, the Baseline scenario and the Carbon neutrality scenario. The Baseline scenario consists of the current national energy policies’ implications, while the Carbon neutrality scenario displays the larger ambition of energy transition to achieve the carbon neutrality target within 2050 in line with Prayut Chan-o-cha, the Prime Minister’s declaration at COP26. 

Participants from the national energy agencies expressed their interest in the LTES’s results and provided feedback and recommendations after the workshop. The key takeaway message was that decarbonising the energy system should be led by renewable, biofuel to fully utilise domestic resources from the agriculture sector and comply with the government’s promoted Bio-Circular-Green (BCG) model. The point was also made that the promotion of hydrogen usage in industry and heating will materialise with technological support from international cooperation.  

The result validation is an important process to ensure that the key assumptions and results are valid for Thailand’s context and benefit the national energy policy recommendation support. The feedback from all stakeholders will be addressed and assumptions will be revised accordingly. The results of LTES and Co-benefit analysis will be presented at the high-level dialogue in early May 2022 and published in the form of a policy recommendation.