Researcher
Indra Overland
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Summary
Research Professor Indra Overland heads NUPI’s Center for Energy Research and is Associate Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
He works on energy issues in Southeast Asia and Central Asia, especially Indonesia and Myanmar. He started working on Southeast Asia in 1992, worked as a long-term political observer in Cambodia for the Joint International Observer Group (JIOG), led cooperation with Chulalongkorn University, the Myanmar Institute for Strategic and International Studies (MISIS), the OSCE Academy, and has twice been a Visiting Fellow at the ASEAN Centre for Energy in Jakarta.
Indra Overland is coauthor of the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report; has been published in Nature Energy; has been awarded the Marcel Cadieux Prize, the Toby Jackman Prize, the Kjetil Stuland Prize and “Kemp’s Best in Energy” (Reuters); and has been rated among the 300 most prolific researchers in Norway and the ninth most followed Norwegian researcher in social media.
He strives to communicate his research to the public and has been interviewed or cited by Al Jazeera, Associated Press, BBC World Service, Berlingske, Bloomberg, CBC, CNN, de Volkskrant, El País, Forbes, Financial Times, Helsingin Sanomat, Het Financieele Dagblad, Hokkaido Shimbun, Le Monde, Le Point, MSN, Newsweek, Politico, Rzeczpospolita, The Economist, The Guardian, The Japan Times, The Straits Times, The New York Times, The Telegraph, Times Literary Supplement, Toronto Star, Tribune de Geneve, Vietnam+, Wall Street China, Wall Street Journal, 24 Heures.
His recent research includes “ASEAN’s energy transition: how to attract more investment in renewable energy”, (Energy, Ecology and Environment, 2023), “Integrating 100% renewable energy into electricity systems: A net-zero analysis for Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar” (Energy Reports, 2023), “Moving beyond the NDCs: ASEAN pathways to a net-zero emissions power sector in 2050” (Applied Energy, 2022), “The ASEAN climate and energy paradox” (Energy and Climate Change, 2021), “Environmental performance of foreign firms: Chinese and Japanese firms in Myanmar”, Journal of Cleaner Production, 2021), “Vietnam's solar and wind power success: Policy implications for the other ASEAN countries” (Energy for Sustainable Development, 2021), “Sharing the Spoils: Winners and Losers in the Belt and Road Initiative in Myanmar”, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 2020), “Local and global aspects of coal in the ASEAN Countries” (Handbook of Sustainable Politics and Economics of Natural Resources, 2020), The 6th ASEAN Energy Outlook” (ACE, 2020), “Impact of Climate Change on ASEAN International Affairs: Risk and Opportunity Multiplier” (NUPI 2017).
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Education
2000 PhD, Faculty of Earth Sciences and Geography, University of Cambridge
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Norwegian Foreign Policy Conference 2023: Response – Norwegian foreign policy for a new era
The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and NUPI have the pleasure of inviting you to the Norwegian Foreign Policy Conference 2023, 21 March at Sentralen, Oslo.
The pulling power of Paris: Unpacking the role of ‘pledge & review’ in climate governance (PullP)
Will the Paris Agreement deliver on its promise and will the international community be able to avoid dangerous climate change? This project analyses the role of the governance architecture of the Par...
The environmental burdens of special economic zones on the coastal and marine environment: A remote sensing assessment in Myanmar
ASEAN’s energy transition: how to attract more investment in renewable energy
The energy transition is progressing slowly in the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). To achieve ASEAN’s target of 23% renewables in the primary energy supply by 2025, the region would need to invest USD 27 billion in renewable energy every year. However, the ASEAN countries attracted no more than USD 8 billion annually from 2016 to 2021. Through a comparative review of three key factors for attracting investment—renewable energy legislation, energy governance reform, and general conditions for investors—this study examines why the region’s renewable energy sector has not attracted more capital. The contribution of the article is threefold. First, it develops a new review model for assessing the business climate for renewable energy in any country. Second, it offers an update on the state of renewable energy deployment in the ASEAN countries. Third, taking into account international best practices, it identifies the obstacles and solutions to attracting investment in renewable energy in Southeast Asia. The article finds that carbon lock-in is pervasive, regulatory practices have been copy-pasted from the fossil-fuel sector to the renewables sector, and, except for Malaysia and Vietnam, no ASEAN country has implemented a major pro-renewable energy governance reform. Certain advanced renewable energy measures, such as auctions and feed-in tariffs, have been adopted in some member states, but the institutional capacity to implement them is limited. The share of renewables in the energy governance system needs to be increased.
Are renewable energy sources more evenly distributed than fossil fuels?
The energy transition literature assumes that renewable energy sources are more evenly distributed globally than fossil fuels. This assumption implies that the shift from fossil fuels to renewables will enable more countries to pursue energy self-sufficiency and end their dependence on imported energy. However, if the assumption is wrong, the energy transition will depend on transboundary electricity or hydrogen trade, creating new international relationships and opportunities for both cooperation and conflict. The contribution of this study is to test the assumption of the even distribution of renewable energy resources on a quantitative empirical basis. Lorenz curves are compared and Gini coefficients calculated for three types of fossil fuels and three types of renewable energy in 161 countries. The study concludes that renewable energy is indeed more evenly distributed than fossil fuels. This finding lends support to claims that energy transition will bring about a more decentralized global energy system centered on prosumer countries with few long-distance energy relationships. However, the difference between the evenness of the distribution of renewable energy resources and that of fossil fuel reserves is not as great as the literature assumes. International trade in energy, and by extension international energy politics, will not disappear entirely.
After COP27, in what direction does climate cooperation go?
From 6 to 18 November hundreds of policymakers, diplomats and experts met in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, for the largest annual gathering on climate action (COP27). We invite you to a seminar which will present the main outcomes of the summit and discuss the directions in which international climate cooperation is heading.
Norges klimaomdømme på Twitter
In this article we explore whether oil and gas industry negatively affects Norway’s climate reputation by analyzing tweets posted during the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow. To make our findings more reliable, we compare tweets about Norway with tweets about Sweden. The results of our study reveal that there is no significant difference in negative sentiment between tweets about Norway compared with tweets about Sweden. However, we find that tweets about the two states differ thematically. While dominant topics in tweets mentioning Sweden are about promotion of the green transition and climate activism, tweets about Norway are mostly about climate financing and the need to phase out fossil fuel production. Furthermore, negative tweets about Sweden are of a more general nature, similar to criticism of all countries not meeting their climate goals, while negative tweets about Norway are specific and related to fossil fuel industry.
The European Union's CBAM as a de facto Climate Club: The Governance Challenges
The European Commission has announced far-reaching reforms to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Among the proposals constituting the European Green Deal is the adoption of a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) to prevent carbon leakage. In practice, however, CBAM will not only act as a shield for the European Emissions Trading System (ETS) but also incentivize other countries to implement compatible carbon pricing schemes. We argue that the EU's CBAM thus de facto has the features of a climate club, but the current proposals and debate do not address how the club would be governed, addressing them involves a trade-off between maintaining control over the direction and ambition of climate policy and CBAM's legitimacy.
Fossil Fuels in Central Asia: Trends and Energy Transition Risks
This data article provides an overview of fossil fuel trends in Central Asia from 2010 to 2019. Data on the production, consumption, export and import of coal, natural gas and oil are summarised for Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. While promoting renewable energy, Central Asia continues to rely on and expand the use of coal, natural gas and oil with no major phase-out plans yet on the horizon.