🌏 Big Picture
ERIA’s research outputs (papers, briefs, reports) need to reach the right government officials in Thailand and Vietnam. The Policy Fellow owns that channel — building relationships with permanent missions in Jakarta, flagging relevant ERIA findings, and creating demand for new research based on what governments actually need.
📅 Day-to-Day Reality
Facilitating policy dialogues and workshops. Producing background papers, policy briefs, and meeting summaries. Liaising with Thai and Vietnamese ministry counterparts. Monitoring bilateral policy developments. Supporting capacity building. Travel to Bangkok and Hanoi for in-country engagement.
📊 What Success Looks Like
6 months: Thai and Vietnamese mission staff know your name. You have mapped the key counterparts at Ministry of Finance, Energy, and Planning in both countries. You have contributed to at least one ERIA policy dialogue event.
12 months: A government counterpart has requested an ERIA brief based on your relationship. You have co-authored or supported a regional policy output.
💡 Mindset Adjustment
You are NOT a junior researcher awaiting instructions. You are expected to be proactive and entrepreneurial — identifying policy windows in Thailand and Vietnam, bringing them back to ERIA’s research teams, and ensuring the research cycle stays connected to real government demand. Initiative is the job.
🎓 SOG Fellowship Application — Strategic Read
You also applied to the ERIA School of Government Fellowship with a proposal titled "Beyond Official Channels: Remittances as Climate Adaptation Finance in the Mekong Subregion: The Thailand-CLM Corridor." This is a significant asset — here is how to think about it.
- Do NOT pretend to know CPSF/ERAB in depth — that is power-systems engineering. He will know immediately.
- DO reference the “3D” framework as a mental model if energy transition comes up: “The decarbonisation and decentralisation shifts your research addresses require fiscal space to be created first — that’s what my subsidy reallocation work mapped.”
- Japan connection: JICA/GRIPS is a genuine rapport-builder. He works from METI frameworks and Japan’s experience — you studied in Tokyo on JICA scholarship. Mention it naturally.
- His policy translation role: As DG for Research AND Policy Design, he cares that research reaches governments. Lead with your “build backwards from constraints” framing — that is exactly the function he manages.
- Thai network asset: You have personal contacts at Ministry of Commerce, Bank of Thailand, National Assembly, and SAO Thailand. If asked about building relationships: "I would be deepening existing contacts, not starting from zero."
- If he asks about distributed energy: “My work is on the fiscal preconditions — the subsidy and financing side — rather than the grid architecture. But the ERAB model you describe depends on cost-competitive DERs, which in Southeast Asia is still a function of subsidy reform and regulatory certainty for private investment.”
- He will probe your economic analysis credentials harder than Okura. Be ready to talk panel data methodology, your modelling choices, and why you chose IEA/WB/OECD data over alternatives.
- Lead with the negative relationship finding (subsidy intensity vs. clean energy deployment) — that is the empirical contribution he will respect most.
- If RCEP comes up, connect it to your trade policy awareness: rules of origin, services liberalisation gaps, how RCEP affects supply chains relevant to clean energy manufacturing.
- He may ask about development gaps — CLMV vs. ASEAN-6. Know the ERIA terminology: “Narrowing Development Gap” is an ERIA research stream.
- Don’t over-claim econometric sophistication — he will notice. Be precise: fixed-effects panel, ordered probit for categorical outcomes, instrumental variables approach considered but rejected (if applicable).
🔬 Thread 1 — Analytical Depth
You modelled Thailand and Vietnam specifically in your fossil fuel research. You understand the fiscal constraints and regional trade-offs at the country level.
🏛 Thread 2 — Government Insider
12 years inside an ASEAN ministry. You know how policy moves — or stalls — through a bureaucracy. You speak decision-maker language, not just academic language.
🌐 Thread 3 — Multilateral Bridge
Engaged with UNDP, ADB, World Bank. Comfortable in international policy dialogue. Can translate between research output and institutional action.
🎓 Thread 4 — Genuine ERIA Commitment
You applied to ERIA's SOG fellowship independently. You have two active research agendas on ASEAN policy. This is not a job application — it is a career direction.
Three key findings: first, high subsidy intensity empirically crowds out renewable energy investment — I found a consistent negative relationship between subsidy intensity as a share of GDP and clean energy deployment. Second, even a 25% reallocation scenario unlocked significant fiscal space — enough to meaningfully close the financing gap in most cases without new borrowing. Third, the employment transition is manageable in aggregate but geographically uneven — ILO multipliers showed renewables generate enough jobs to offset fossil industry losses overall, but they go to different regions and skill profiles. That is the core argument for embedding Just Transition frameworks into NDC commitments.
If asked about Vietnam: Vietnam's key planning document is Power Development Plan 8 — PDP8 — released in 2023, which sets a target of around 47% renewable energy by 2030 and maps out a significant coal phase-down. Vietnam is one of the two ASEAN JETP countries, with a $15.5 billion pledge. The main implementation bottleneck is EVN — Electricity of Vietnam — the state utility, which carries significant debt and has limited balance sheet capacity to finance new renewable investment. The feed-in tariff mechanism has created boom-bust cycles in solar and wind deployment due to regulatory uncertainty, which has dampened private investor confidence. The Ministry of Industry and Trade is the primary government counterpart for energy policy decisions.
My approach is to build backwards from the decision-maker's constraints, not forwards from the data. Practically: present findings with explicit scenario options rather than single prescriptions, always pair analysis with an implementation pathway, and frame recommendations in terms of the specific decision a minister or director-general is facing in the next budget cycle. I have done this in policy briefs for Ministry leadership and in multilateral workshop settings, and the consistent feedback is that that framing is more useful than a standalone analytical report.
The Just Energy Transition Partnerships — JETP — for Vietnam and Indonesia are the most important experiments in whether international concessional finance can provide enough political cover for domestic subsidy reform. Evidence so far is mixed: pledged finance has been slow to materialise, and conditionality has sometimes been misaligned with national governance capacity. ERIA is well-positioned to provide the comparative regional analysis that helps member states learn from each other rather than navigating these trade-offs in isolation.
I have handled multi-source international datasets — IEA, World Bank, OECD, ADB — including the alignment and comparability challenges that come with cross-country data. I hold Google Data Analytics certification, which reinforced data storytelling and visualisation skills using Tableau and R. I am not a software engineer, but I am a capable applied analyst who can work with large, messy data independently and produce outputs that non-technical readers can use.
The key discipline is transparency: document which source was used for which calculation, explain why, and flag uncertainty where it is material. Policy audiences can handle uncertainty if it is explained clearly; they cannot trust analysis where it has been hidden.
Beyond analysis, I come from the same government archetype — a Ministry of Finance official in a Southeast Asian economy with similar institutional pressures, procurement rules, and stakeholder dynamics. That shared institutional frame tends to build trust faster than outsiders expect, because the starting point is mutual recognition of how government actually works. ERIA's position — co-located with the ASEAN Secretariat and in structured dialogue with member state governments — gives me the institutional home to build those relationships systematically. I am starting from a strong foundation, not from zero.
How to frame it: "I don't have formal in-posting experience in Thailand, but I do have personal relationships with officials across several Thai ministries — Ministry of Commerce, Bank of Thailand, and the National Assembly — from my GRIPS cohort and professional network. Building government relationships in Thailand would mean deepening existing contacts, not starting cold."
Important: Only deploy this if they press the experience gap specifically. It is a genuine bridge — not name-dropping.
On relevance: the energy transition and climate finance agenda is active in both countries right now, so a well-timed brief that speaks to their current NDC revision or subsidy reform pressure gets traction. On brevity — from Ministry experience — a two-page brief that clearly frames the decision a minister faces gets read. A 40-page report does not.
I would also invest early in mapping the institutional landscape: who the relevant counterparts are at the Ministry of Energy versus Finance versus Planning, and which of those agencies actually drives the decision ERIA is trying to influence. Getting that mapping right separates effective liaison from well-intentioned noise.
The policy fellow sits at the critical junction of ERIA's analytical output and the national ministries that need to use it — essentially the bridge that determines whether ERIA's research actually changes anything. I understand that function well from having been on the receiving end of it in the Ministry of Finance for over a decade.
Beyond that, my experience is not purely domestic. My research explicitly modelled four ASEAN economies. My GRIPS education was regionally oriented. My secondment involved multilateral engagement with partners working across the region. The "domestic" label understates what I have actually been doing.
The combination — established government track record plus recent rigorous academic training — is relatively uncommon and directly relevant to what this role requires.
The right response is rigorous transparency: make the analytical basis of the finding clear, present the evidence, and let the quality of the research speak. Governments are entitled to their positions; what ERIA provides is independent, high-quality analysis — and that independence is precisely what makes it valuable to all member states, including Indonesia.
I think of it as planting seeds. The climate funding analysis I produced fed into the Ministry's engagement strategy — I may not have seen every recommendation acted on directly, but the framing and evidence I created became part of the institutional knowledge that shapes future decisions. That is a realistic and healthy way to work in policy.
The mitigation I have developed is to be explicit about what "done enough for this purpose" looks like before I start — defining the minimum standard up front rather than letting perfect be the enemy of useful. I am better at this now than I was three years ago, but it is still something I actively manage.
My primary interest is in the Policy Fellow role because the government liaison and policy design function is where I have the most to contribute right now, given my Ministry of Finance background. The SOG proposal is a research interest I want to develop, but it does not compete with or dilute my commitment to this position.
What I can say is that most formal government engagement at the ministry and directorate level in ASEAN operates in English, and I am fully professional there. I would also invest in building basic conversational proficiency in Thai or Vietnamese in the near term — it signals respect and commitment even when the substantive work happens in English.
My work is designed to reach decision-makers and practitioners, not to contribute to academic literature. That is actually a better fit for ERIA's output model — which is primarily policy briefs, working papers, and research reports, not journal articles. That said, building a more formal publication record is something I would prioritise at ERIA.
The scale and formality are different from an ASEAN consultation framework, but the core design questions are the same: who are the stakeholders, what are their information needs, how do you structure their input so it influences the outcome, and how do you close the feedback loop. I am confident those skills transfer to the regional context with ERIA's existing institutional frameworks as a scaffold.
The more relevant claim is this: I understand the pathway between research and ASEAN-level decisions because I have worked at the national government end of that pathway for over a decade. I know what it takes for an analytical finding to cross from "interesting research" to "something a minister will carry into a meeting." That is exactly what this role is about.
I framed this as a strategic gap and recommended how to restructure Indonesia's climate project submissions — specifically by emphasising measurable local community impact and aligning project framing with donor prioritisation language. That analysis fed directly into the Ministry's engagement strategy with multilateral climate finance providers, and the approach I recommended was incorporated into how the division briefed senior officials on climate finance positioning.
In practice: I use infographics and visual dashboards heavily — I designed the Ministry bureau's monthly infographic reports and annual reports from scratch using Adobe tools. For workshop presentations, I structure findings as decision trees rather than data dumps. And I always include a "so what" box — a one-sentence plain-language statement of what this means for the person reading it. In my knowledge management role, I delivered training to audiences ranging from junior procurement staff to Echelon I officials, which required constant recalibration of technical depth.
Concrete example: my fossil fuel subsidy paper was submitted to the ADBI Call for Papers while simultaneously readjusting to my return to the Ministry. I structured it as a three-week analytical sprint — model, findings, write-up — and met the submission date. The climate funding analysis was similarly deadline-driven, needed before a multilateral engagement schedule. Both delivered on time.
What does not work for me under pressure is multitasking fragmentation. I prefer fewer parallel streams with clear milestones rather than many simultaneous tasks without priority.
What I took from it: I now do a "reader's first question" exercise before structuring any paper — asking what the target audience most needs to understand first, rather than building up from data to conclusions. I also find it useful to get a critical read from someone outside the technical domain before finalising structure.
Learning to make those differences explicit in research conversations — rather than assuming shared context — made me a much better analytical collaborator. I also served as GRIPS's PR Ambassador, which involved communicating research to external international audiences. The UNDP multilateral workshop I co-facilitated was similarly multicultural — government officials, UN staff, and private sector participants from multiple countries, all with different communication registers.
My approach was to stop treating it as an information problem and start treating it as an incentive problem. Instead of explaining the process more thoroughly, I focused on showing what the functional position unlocked for individuals — career pathways, allowance structures, technical recognition. That shift moved conversations that had stalled for months. By the end, 68 staff had successfully converted, above target.
"The distributed energy transformation you describe — moving from centralised fossil generation to aggregated DERs — depends on two enabling conditions working in parallel: the right technical architecture, which your research addresses, and the fiscal and investment environment that makes deployment economically viable at scale.
My work sits on the second side. Fossil fuel subsidies distort the price signals that DER deployment depends on — if grid electricity is artificially cheap, the economics of rooftop solar and battery storage never close for households or businesses. My research quantified how reallocation of those subsidies could change that calculus across four ASEAN economies. That is the fiscal precondition for the decarbonisation and decentralisation transition your ERAB and CPSF work assumes has happened."
Key phrase: "Fiscal precondition for the 3D transition." Shows you read his work and understand how the pieces connect.
Full Name
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia
Founded
2008, under the East Asia Summit (EAS) framework
HQ
ASEAN Secretariat, Jl. Sisingamangaraja, Jakarta + Annex at Sentral Senayan II
Coverage
ASEAN 10 + EAS: Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia, USA
Role
Research and policy advisory arm for ASEAN economic integration. Reports to EAS Leaders Summits.
Structure
Governing Board → President → COO + Chief Economist → Research Directors → Fellows
ASEAN Centrality is the bloc's core defensive posture in the regional architecture. It asserts that ASEAN must remain the dominant driver of the security and economic order in the Asia-Pacific — rather than being marginalised by competition between external powers like the US and China.
How it works in practice
All major powers are expected to engage the region through ASEAN-led multilateral forums: the East Asia Summit (EAS), the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), and the ASEAN+3 framework. The principle insists these are the legitimate venues — not bilateral arrangements that exclude ASEAN's voice.
When to invoke in interview
If geopolitical rivalry, AUKUS, the Quad, or US-China competition comes up, reference Centrality: "ERIA's work directly supports ASEAN Centrality by ensuring the empirical analysis underpinning regional decisions comes from within the ASEAN institutional family, not from external actors with their own interests."
Current tension
ASEAN Centrality is under real pressure. The Quad (US, Japan, India, Australia) and AUKUS are creating alternative regional security architectures that bypass ASEAN. The Philippines' 2026 chairmanship has taken a firmer stance on maritime law, which implicitly tests how much room individual members have to act outside the ASEAN consensus framework.
JETP is the flagship multilateral financing mechanism to accelerate coal retirement and scale up renewables in emerging economies. It blends public concessional finance with private capital. Indonesia received a $20 billion pledge; Vietnam received $15.5 billion.
How it works
A group of partner countries (G7 + EU) commit concessional and private capital under conditions tied to accelerated coal phase-out and renewable energy deployment targets. The host country produces a Comprehensive Investment and Policy Plan (CIPP) setting out how funds will be used.
Why implementation has been difficult
- Disbursement speed: Funds have been slow to materialise — complex blended finance structures require prolonged negotiation.
- Capital cost mismatch: Concessional rates offered are often still too high for some renewable projects in developing economies.
- Coal retirement politics: Early coal retirement generates job losses in specific regions — the Just Transition component requires domestic political solutions that take time.
- Regulatory bottlenecks: Integrating international finance pledges with national climate budget tagging and public procurement frameworks exposes regulatory gaps (this is directly relevant to your MoF background).
What to say if asked
"The JETP framework is important but has exposed a key tension: the conditionality is designed for fiscal systems more capable than the ones being asked to use the funds. Bridging that gap requires exactly the kind of policy translation work that ERIA does well."
The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Blueprint 2025 laid the groundwork for a highly integrated regional economy, focusing on free flow of goods, services, investment, skilled labour, and capital.
What it achieved and what it didn't
The AEC reduced tariffs significantly (most intra-ASEAN goods trade at 0%), but non-tariff barriers, services liberalisation, and investment rule harmonisation remain incomplete. The core gap: high-level integration vision versus domestic regulatory realities in each member state.
ASEAN Community Vision 2045
As the bloc transitions to the 2045 Vision, strategic focus is shifting toward:
- Supply chain resilience — post-COVID rethinking of over-dependence on single sources
- Digital transformation — ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA), under negotiation
- Green economy — integration of climate commitments into economic planning
The persistent challenge
"The gap between the 2045 Vision's ambition and the reality of domestic regulatory harmonisation across 10 very different member states" — this is the operational challenge ERIA's research addresses.
Active since January 2022, RCEP is the world's largest free trade agreement by GDP coverage. Members: ASEAN 10 + China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand.
What makes it significant
Its most important achievement is establishing a single set of trade rules and unified "rules of origin". Before RCEP, the "noodle bowl" of bilateral trade agreements in Asia meant complex, overlapping rules. RCEP simplifies this: a product assembled in Southeast Asia using components from Japan and China can be exported duty-free across the entire member bloc. This firmly anchors ASEAN at the centre of global manufacturing supply chains.
What it doesn't cover
RCEP is less ambitious than CPTPP on services liberalisation and digital trade. India withdrew before signing. The US is not a member (it withdrew from TPP in 2017). These absences shape the geopolitical balance of the agreement.
Relevance to ERIA's work
RCEP's implementation monitoring and trade facilitation analysis is an active research area for ERIA. Supply chain resilience under RCEP in the context of US-China decoupling is a live policy question.
Both are headquartered in Jakarta. Both serve the ASEAN process. But they have fundamentally different functions:
The ASEAN Secretariat
Administrative and diplomatic backbone of ASEAN. Manages institutional operations, coordinates summits and working groups, handles legal agreements (treaties, MOUs), tracks implementation of frameworks like the AEC Blueprint, and maintains ASEAN's institutional memory. If ASEAN is a government, the Secretariat is the civil service.
ERIA
The intellectual engine. Independent think tank providing empirical research, economic modelling, and policy recommendations that inform the Secretariat's frameworks and the decisions of ASEAN leaders. ERIA has no administrative or coordination function — it produces evidence. If the Secretariat builds the car, ERIA designs the engine.
The relationship
ERIA's research directly feeds ASEAN Summits via the EAS process. ERIA fellows have access to Secretariat consultations and can engage directly with member state working groups. The co-location is deliberate — proximity to the Secretariat increases the likelihood that research findings actually reach decision-makers.
The Philippines holds the ASEAN Chairmanship in 2026 under the theme "Navigating Our Future, Together."
Three Priority Pillars
- Peace and Security Anchors — Maritime security, South China Sea Code of Conduct, rules-based order
- Prosperity Corridors — Digital economy, supply chain resilience, MSME support, RCEP implementation
- People Empowerment — Human capital, food security, climate resilience, gender equality
What makes Manila's chairmanship distinctive
The Philippines under President Marcos Jr. has adopted a notably firmer stance on maritime law and international arbitration (referencing the 2016 South China Sea ruling) compared to recent chairs. This represents a strategic pivot toward a more assertive interpretation of ASEAN Centrality — insisting that a legally binding Code of Conduct in the South China Sea is non-negotiable. Simultaneously, Manila is pushing digital integration and supply chain diversification as core economic priorities.
Why this matters for the interview
If geopolitics or ASEAN priorities come up, you can say: "The Philippines chairmanship in 2026 has sharpened ASEAN's position on rules-based maritime order while simultaneously advancing the digital economy and climate resilience agenda — which creates interesting tension between the security and economic integration tracks that ERIA's research navigates."
The key planning document
Thailand's energy planning is anchored in the Power Development Plan (PDP) — a 20-year rolling master plan for electricity generation mix and capacity. The current version targets approximately 30% renewable energy by 2030, which is achievable but requires significant grid modernisation investment.
PTT Group — the political economy constraint
PTT is the state energy conglomerate and has substantial influence over fossil fuel infrastructure investment decisions and pricing policy. Its financial interests are partly aligned with continued natural gas and petrochemical investment, which creates institutional resistance to accelerated transition. This is the primary political economy obstacle to subsidy reform and early fossil fuel phase-out in Thailand — far more so than legislative opposition.
How subsidies work in Thailand
Unlike Indonesia's more explicit fuel subsidy budget lines, Thailand's fossil fuel subsidies operate primarily through electricity price controls administered by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC). The ERC sets tariffs below cost-recovery levels during periods of price pressure, effectively providing an implicit subsidy. This makes them politically sticky — removing them shows up directly in household electricity bills and is immediately visible politically.
Why Thailand is NOT in JETP
Thailand has not joined the JETP framework. This is partly a reflection of PTT's political weight, partly Thailand's self-perception as an upper-middle income economy less in need of concessional finance, and partly a preference to manage the transition on Thailand's own terms. The Ministry of Energy is the primary government counterpart.
Your research connection
Your fossil fuel subsidy paper modelled Thailand's fiscal space for reallocation. You can say: "My research found that Thailand has relatively more fiscal space than Vietnam for subsidy reallocation precisely because its subsidies are administered as tariff controls rather than direct budget transfers — the fiscal mechanism is different, but the political economy challenge is similar."
The key planning document
Vietnam's Power Development Plan 8 (PDP8), released in 2023, is the master energy plan. It targets ~47% renewable energy by 2030 and maps a significant coal phase-down with a shift toward LNG imports as a transition fuel before full renewable deployment. PDP8 is more ambitious on renewables than the previous plan and was revised partly in response to JETP commitments.
JETP — Vietnam's $15.5B pledge
Vietnam is one of the two ASEAN JETP countries alongside Indonesia. The pledge of $15.5 billion from the International Partners Group (IPG) is meant to accelerate coal retirement and deploy renewables. Implementation has been challenging — the Comprehensive Investment and Policy Plan (CIPP) required to unlock funds took longer than expected, and disbursement has been slow due to complex blended finance structuring.
EVN — the key bottleneck
Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) is the state utility and the central actor in Vietnam's electricity system. EVN carries significant debt — partly from purchasing electricity from Independent Power Producers at regulated rates while selling to consumers below cost-recovery. EVN's financial distress limits its balance sheet capacity to finance new renewable investment and is the primary operational bottleneck for scaling clean energy deployment.
Feed-in tariff boom-bust
Vietnam's solar and wind energy deployment boomed between 2019 and 2021 thanks to generous feed-in tariffs, then collapsed when the tariffs were not renewed and replaced with a slow-moving competitive auction mechanism. This boom-bust cycle has damaged private investor confidence and created regulatory uncertainty that ERIA's policy research has tracked closely.
Ministry counterpart
The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) is the primary government counterpart for energy policy. The Ministry of Finance is relevant for fiscal aspects of JETP and public energy investment.
Your research connection
Your paper modelled Vietnam's subsidy reallocation fiscal space. You can say: "Vietnam's JETP commitment creates a direct policy anchor for subsidy reform, but the EVN debt problem means that even well-designed fiscal reallocation scenarios run into implementation bottlenecks at the utility level — that is the kind of country-specific constraint my research tried to capture."
Here is what the proposal signals about you, and how to deploy that in the interview:
What it shows (positives)
Deep, self-directed research interest in Thailand specifically. You identified a genuine policy gap (remittances invisible to ASEAN climate architecture). You engaged with ERIA's own researchers by name. This is not a casual application.
How to use it naturally
If asked: "What draws you to Thailand specifically?" or "What research interests do you bring beyond the Policy Fellow function?" — this is your answer. It demonstrates authentic intellectual commitment, not just job-seeking.
Key talking points from proposal
Remittances from Thai-based CLM workers may exceed official adaptation flows to those countries. ASEAN's own climate strategy doesn't mention diaspora finance at all. Thailand's PromptPay corridor to Cambodia and Laos is a concrete, actionable infrastructure. Myanmar's hundi system — 94% of workers use informal channels.
If asked about the two applications
"The Policy Fellow role is about government liaison and policy design — my primary interest. The SOG fellowship is a research track. Both reflect the same commitment to ERIA and this region. They're different functions, not competing priorities."
The Partnership Timeline
1976: Diplomatic relations established.
2013: Strategic Partnership.
May 2025: Elevated to Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (Joint Statement signed, Thai PM Paetongtarn visit to Vietnam).
May 2026: 50th anniversary summit in Bangkok — Three Connections strategy launched, $25B trade target.
The Kimura Connection
ERIA’s research documentation notes explicitly that the Three Connections framework “deeply echoes the research on international production networks pioneered by ERIA’s Chief Economist Fukunari Kimura.” If Kimura interviews you and this topic comes up, acknowledging this connection is a genuine (not flattering) analytical point.
Trade Numbers to Know
TH-VN two-way trade: $22.1B in 2025, targeting $25B. Vietnam’s electronics exports to Thailand surged 29.2% in early 2026, exceeding $1B. Thai automotive parts are critical irreplaceable inputs for Vietnamese assembly lines. Classic vertical integration in a joint production network.
Energy Alignment (Pillar 3)
Thailand’s Bio-Circular-Green (BCG) model and Vietnam’s net-zero national strategy are being deliberately aligned. Both face the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) — joint response on green standards is a live policy coordination challenge. ERIA’s energy research is directly relevant.
In February 2026, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz triggered an immediate systemic shock across ASEAN — crude above $100/bbl, LNG supply constrained, shipping rerouted via Cape of Good Hope. This was not a price spike; it was a physical supply interruption of roughly 21 million barrels/day.
Cascading impacts ERIA documented
- Naphtha and LPG shortages crippled petrochemical output across the region
- Automotive and semiconductor manufacturing costs surged (energy-intensive inputs)
- Fertilizer prices spiked — food security risk in lower-income ASEAN states
- Freight rates exploded as shipping lanes rerouted, hitting all regional trade
ERIA’s conclusion
Fragmented national responses are insufficient. ERIA championed joint multilateral oil and gas stockpiling as a non-negotiable pillar of regional energy security — moving from isolated national reserves to shared regional buffers. This is a direct application of regional coordination logic to energy security.
How to use it in interview
"ERIA’s April 2026 Issue Paper on the Hormuz disruption made clear that energy security in ASEAN is now a collective governance challenge, not a national one. That is exactly the kind of regional policy coordination problem that requires the liaison function this role provides — translating ERIA’s analysis into coordinated member state engagement."
Coal Transition Report: ERIA warns that rushed coal retirement creates stranded asset risk, localised economic devastation in coal-dependent regions, and potential industrial electricity price spikes that erode manufacturing competitiveness. Key finding: there is a negative correlation between high industrial electricity prices and industrial development — fast transition risks hollowing out the manufacturing base.
Layered Market Approach to ASEAN Power Grid: Rather than attempting a single European-style unified grid (politically impossible), ERIA proposes starting with harmonised technical grid codes and sub-regional bilateral/multilateral power trading agreements that layer on top of each other organically.
The interdependence
Coal retirement is only socially viable if cheap, clean replacement power can be imported cross-border. The Power Grid and coal transition are the same problem viewed from two angles. This is the context for Okura-san’s distributed energy systems work.
Connection to your fossil fuel paper
"My research showed that subsidy reallocation could fund the transition — ERIA’s May 2026 reports show exactly what that transition needs to look like to be industrially viable and politically survivable. The fiscal and the technical sides of the same problem."
AFISS (ASEAN Framework for Integrated Semiconductor Supply Chains): Adopted under Malaysia’s 2025 Chairship, co-developed with ERIA. Focuses on moving ASEAN beyond assembly/testing (ATP) into IC design and wafer fabrication. Key lever: Indonesia’s nickel (40% of global supply) and Vietnam’s rare earths (20%) as negotiating chips with foreign semiconductor giants.
ASEAN-Japan Next-Gen Vehicle Masterplan (March 2026): Argues against a single-track electrification path. Advocates a phased diversified approach: ICE + HEV + biofuels + BEV progressively. Rationale: premature full-BEV shift imports all electrical components from China, hollowing out ASEAN manufacturing into a pure assembly hub.
Thailand and Vietnam’s specific stakes
- Thailand: Major ICE/HEV production hub — disruption risk from BEV transition
- Vietnam: Rare earth deposits + VinFast BEV brand — potential mover in next-gen auto
- The TH-VN Three Connections supply chain pillar directly links automotive value chains