Opening Remarks by Singapore's Ambassador for Climate Action at FASTP Funds in Action

20 MAY 2026

OPENING REMARKS BY SINGAPORE’S AMBASSADOR FOR CLIMATE ACTION AT FAST-P FUNDS IN ACTION, MARINA BAY SANDS EXPO & CONVENTION CENTRE, SINGAPORE, 20 MAY 2026

The Energy Crisis, Climate Transition, and FAST-P

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.

Before I speak about FAST-P, let me talk about what’s occupying most of our attention these days and what it means for climate action.

Eight weeks ago, the Strait of Hormuz closed. The International Energy Agency has called this the greatest threat to global energy security in history.

Asia sits at the epicentre of this energy crisis.

  • Oil hit US$120 dollars a barrel. Asian LNG spot prices doubled.

  • Queues stretched outside petrol stations in Manila, Bangkok, and Hanoi.

  • Cooking gas ran short in Indian cities.

  • A chokepoint twelve kilometres wide at its narrowest point has triggered a crisis across an entire continent.

The crisis has clarified one thing though: energy security and climate action are no longer separate agendas in Asia. They have converged. But the convergence is fragile.

WHERE THE CONVERGENCE IS REAL

First, the convergence is genuine in the power sector.

  • Solar and wind — in the language of the energy trilemma — tick all three boxes simultaneously.

    • They are cheaper than new fossil fuel generation in most Asian markets. [i]

    • They are domestically sourced, eliminating exposure to foreign supply risk.

    • And they are zero-carbon.

  • For policymakers who previously had to choose which box to prioritise, the crisis has made the choice easier.

  • South Korea's President has called for the country to accelerate renewables in direct response to the crisis. [ii]

  • Vietnam has updated its Just Energy Transition Partnership implementation plan, committing that no new coal-fired plants will be built after 2030 — renewable energy is now projected to account for 47% of installed capacity by 2030. [iii]

    Renewable energy is not just a story of energy security but of fiscal security.

  • Pakistan offers a striking example that predates the current crisis but speaks to its logic.

  • Pakistan's expansion of distributed solar capacity has saved over US$12 billion in fuel imports since 2018 and, at current market prices, is projected to save US$6.3 billion dollars in 2026 alone. [iv]

Second, the convergence is real in the electric vehicles space.

  • Faced with severe shortages, consumers across the region are drawing the obvious conclusion: they need an alternative to petrol and diesel.

    • EV sales are surging in India by double digit growth rates[v], in Vietnam by triple digits. [vi]

    • At the Bangkok Auto Show in early April, BYD received the most orders of any automaker — beating Toyota for the first time in history. [vii]

Third, there is some convergence in regional energy cooperation.

  • At a meeting last month, ASEAN foreign ministers stressed that the ASEAN Power Grid was essential to strengthening the region’s energy resilience.

  • ASEAN's energy ministers have called for strengthening intra-regional energy trade.

  • The Laos-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project has already demonstrated that multilateral cross-border power trade works.

  • Singapore has called for swift ratification of the ASEAN Petroleum Security Agreement. [viii]

    • Ratification will establish a co-ordinated emergency response mechanism for fuel sharing and open the door to wider energy resilience co-operation, including joint R&D in renewable and low-carbon technologies.

WHERE THE CONVERGENCE IS FRAGILE

But the convergence is fragile.

The first source of fragility is the time horizon.

  • The crisis has demonstrated, viscerally, the cost of fossil fuel dependency.

  • But it has not changed the fact that the transition takes time.

    • Solar panels and wind turbines take years to procure, finance, permit, and install.

    • Grids take decades to transform.

The second source of fragility is fiscal policy.

  • The response of some Asian governments to the spike in fuel prices has been to subsidise petrol and diesel. [ix]

    • While this is understandable from the perspective of protecting consumers from immediate pain, sustaining these subsidies is not helpful for the climate agenda.

    • They suppress the price signals that makes EVs and domestic solar more attractive to consumers and investors.

  • The higher fossil fuel subsidies, coupled with limited fiscal buffers and high public debt, has also squeezed the government budgets needed to fund grid investment and concessional financing for green infrastructure.

The third and biggest source of fragility is the coal entrenchment risk.

  • The crisis has not created a coal surge in Asia, rather it has accelerated an existing one.

  • Coal use in ASEAN has been rising consistently for a decade. As a share of total primary energy supply, coal went from 18% in 2013 to over 30% by 2023. [x]

  • And the coal plants serving Asian economies are relatively young — averaging under 15 years old — which means they have 30 to 40 years of economically justified operating life ahead of them. [xi]

Asia is being pulled by two opposing forces: coal as a short-term backstop and renewables as a medium-term strategy.

  • It is not clear which force will dominate.

  • Asian countries might do well to heed China’s example:

    • maintain the coal fleet as spare capacity for energy security, while steadily increasing reliance on renewable energy for electricity generation.

FINANCING TO MAKE THE CONVERGENCE DURABLE

The task before us is this:

How can we adapt our policy regimes and financing architecture to make the convergence of energy security and climate action durable?

This is where blended finance can play a role, and where the Financing Asia’s Transition Partnership, or FAST-P, comes in.

Singapore established FAST-P as a blended finance platform to help unlock and scale capital for Asia’s transition.

  • The Singapore Government pledged up to US$500 million in grant capital, to be matched by other sources of concessional capital.

  • The aim is to use this US$1 billion base of catalytic capital to mobilise another US$4 billion of commercial capital, to reach a target fund size of US$5 billion.

  • We established three funds under FAST-P.

    • the Energy Transition Acceleration Finance, or ETAF partnership;

    • the Green Investments Partnership, or GIP.

    • the Industrial Transformation Programme, or ITP.

FAST-P: PROGRESS IN MOBILISING CAPITAL

Let me give an update on the progress of the three FAST-P funds in mobilising capital.

ETAF’s mandate is to finance the replacement of fossil fuel-based energy with renewables and grid modernisation.

  • ETAF comprises two investment sleeves:

    • coal phase-out: to finance the replacement of coal-fired power plants with renewable energy; and

    • coal displacement: to displace captive or on-grid coal assets with renewable energy.

  • DBS Bank and the UK Private Infrastructure Development Group are joining the displacement sleeve.

  • ETAF is in active discussions with other providers of catalytic and commercial capital and is looking forward to announcing its first close this year.

GIP’s investment focus is on sustainable infrastructure, i.e. renewable energy and storage, electric mobility, water and waste management.

  • GIP has just achieved its second close, bringing total commitments to US$800 million.

  • The Singapore government’s contribution of US$80 million in concessional has been matched by other catalytic capital providers:

    • development finance institutions like British International Investment and Export Finance Australia; and

    • philanthropies like Allied Climate Partners.

  • This base of US$160 million has crowded in US$640 million from commercial players such as the Bank of the Philippine Islands, Cathay United Bank, DBS Bank, and HSBC.

ITP’s focus is on decarbonising industrial activities, through electrification, green data centres, hydrogen solutions, and carbon capture.

  • Catalytic capital providers like the British International Investment and the Japan International Cooperation Agency have joined the programme. The Asian Development Bank also intends to participate, subject to approvals.

  • ITP is now broadening its coalition of commercial partners and looks forward to announcing its first close this year.

FAST-P: IMPACT OF CAPITAL DEPLOYED

It is early days still but let me give a flavour of where some of FAST-P’s capital has been deployed and what the impact has been.

GIP has committed around US$128 million—roughly 25% of its first-close capital—to four sustainable infrastructure investments across Southeast Asia.

  • One of the investments is to help scale distributed bioenergy projects across Southeast Asia and India.

    • This is an asset class often under-financed because of feedstock risks, smaller project sizes, and operational complexity.

  • Two of the investments are to accelerate the rollout of utility-scale solar and battery storage projects in the Philippines and across Southeast Asia respectively.

    • GIP funding is enabling the companies to complete project development and bring projects to a bankable stage and into construction.

  • The fourth investment is a loan to support the construction of small power plants in Indonesia using mini-hydro technology.

    • Local banks were reluctant to take construction risk and the portfolio was too nascent for international banks. GIP funding made it possible.

The significance of FAST-P funding goes beyond the four individual projects.

  • It is the creation of a piple line of bankable projects and the scope for scaling made possible by these investments.

  • From a climate perspective, these projects are expected to avoid over one million tonnes of CO₂ emissions annually.

FAST-P is demonstrating that catalytic capital can help unlock decarbonisation opportunities that would not otherwise be financed.

CONCLUSION

Let me conclude.

The energy security agenda and the climate agenda are beginning to converge. But it is a fragile convergence.

We must strive to make this convergence durable through policy reforms and financing solutions.

If we can build the right financing structures— credible, scalable, and catalytic— we can accelerate not just decarbonisation, but sustainable growth, energy resilience, and long-term economic competitiveness across the region.

FAST-P offers one of the financing pathways towards such a future.

We invite you to join us on this meaningful and exciting journey.

[i] Zero Carbon Analytics. (2026, April 7). Economics of coal versus renewables in Southeast Asia’s energy crisis. Zero Carbon Analytics. https://zerocarbon-analytics.org/energy/coal-vs-renewables-asean-energy-crisis/

[ii] Chosun Ilbo. (2026, March 30). President Lee Jae Myung warns of energy crisis, urges rapid shift to renewable energy. The Chosun Ilbo. https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2026/03/31/Q2VWXIACIVBRZA27NBTDY3DQQY/

[iii] Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Viet Nam. (2026). Viet Nam updates plan for the JETP Declaration.  https://en.mae.gov.vn/Pages/chi-tiet-tin-Eng.aspx?ItemID=9226

[iv] Harrison, Alice. “The hedge that paid off: How Pakistan’s solar boom is shielding it from the Hormuz crisis.” Secure Energy Project, 17 March 2026. Data & analysis by Lauri Myllyvirta (CREA), in partnership with Renewables First. Available at: Secure Energy Project.

[v] Nikkei Asia. (2026, April 24). Energy crisis drives India toward EVs as Asia’s auto market shifts. Nikkei Asia. https://asia.nikkei.com/editor-s-picks/editor-in-chief-s-picks/editor-s-choice-energy-crisis-drives-india-toward-evs-as-asia-s-auto-market-shifts

[vi]The Straits Times. (2026, April 14). Iran war revs up electric car demand in Asia. The Straits Times. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/iran-war-revs-up-electric-car-demand-in-asia

[vii] Thai Auto News. (2026, April 5). Record orders placed at 2026 Bangkok Motorshow.  ThaiAutoNews.net. https://www.thaiautonews.net/record-orders-placed-at-2026-bangkok-motorshow/

[viii] Channel NewsAsia. (2026, May 7). PM Wong calls for swift ratification of ASEAN petroleum, trade agreements amid Middle East conflict. CNA. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/asean-summit-cebu-lawrence-wong-middle-east-strait-hormuz-6108656

[ix] Reuters. (2026, April 27). Asian governments spend billions of dollars to offset oil price shock. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/asian-governments-spend-billions-dollars-offset-oil-price-shock-2026-04-27/

[x]ASEAN Centre for Energy. (2025). ASEAN Energy Database System (AEDS). ASEAN Centre for Energy. https://aseanenergy.org/projects/aeds

[xi] International Energy Agency. (2024). Southeast Asia energy outlook 2024 (Executive summary). IEA. https://www.iea.org/reports/southeast-asia-energy-outlook-2024/executive-summary