Countries urged to come up with new approaches to energy policies

MANILA, Philippines - The Southeast Asian region needs to come up with new approaches to energy policies and consumption as global warming and climate change continue to threaten the economic growth of countries prone to natural disasters, participants of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Makati City said on Friday.

Manila, along with Bangkok and Jakarta particularly stood out in the region as these economic centers with huge urban populations are located along coastlines.

Last year, the Philippines was hit by typhoon Yolanda (international name Haiyan), killing thousands and causing billions in damage in the Visayas region.

"It is obvious that we will have more severe and more frequent disasters in the region,” President Takehiko Nakao of the Asian Development Bank said.

Rachel Kyte, vice-president and special envoy for climate change at the World Bank, said the effects of climate change require a collaboration from the government, private sector and civil society.

"What we’re desperate to do is to bring the conversation out of the ministries of environment alone and put it on the table of the ministry of finance, planning, development, and beyond,” she said.

Yolanda Kakabadse, president of the World Wildlife Fund International, added that the private sector also has a big role in lobbying governments and in advancing new and climate-smart business models.

“The pressure and the change are within the investor and within the private sector,” she said.

Meanwhile, Atsutoshi Nishida, chair of the Board at Toshiba Corp. said businesses can also focus on technological innovation in energy storage for their operations.

"If you could develop an incredibly, unimaginably high-performance storage battery, you’d be able to solve almost 90 percent of energy issues on the Earth," he said.