The Electricity Sector Leads Energy Market Integration in East Asia: Introduction

Electricity market integration in East Asia is an important component of the energy market integration (EMI) initiatives supported by the East Asian Summit (EAS) member countries. It is argued that an integrated East Asian electricity market would allow consumers to have access to competing suppliers within and beyond borders and enable electricity providers in member economies to deal with peak demand and supply security better. Electricity market integration within the EAS area has made some progress with the Greater Sub-Mekong Region (GMS) as the forefront of changes. The proposed ASEAN Power Grid (APG) has also been implemented gradually. However, electricity market integration within the EAS economies remains a challenging task. While physical infrastructure is often expensive and financially demanding, institutional development is more important and complicated since it is closely linked with market liberalization and regulation. To gain a better understanding of the issues involved and follow two previous ERIA projects, this EMI project focuses on the electricity sector. In this introductory chapter, we first describe the objectives of this study in Section 1. The main findings in the core chapters are then summarized in Section 2. Some recommendations for policy makers are presented in Section 3.