COP30: ARE collaborates with IRENA & ENACT to spotlight DRE innovations
On 13 November 2025, the Alliance for Rural Electrification (ARE), IRENA and ENACT, organised a session at COP 30 showcasing modular and locally governed DRE solutions in ASEAN & the Pacific for their ability to absorb climate shocks, speed recovery and align with local priorities.
ARE Vice President Ayu Abdullah highlighted the need for a practical reframing of ASEAN’s energy conversation, which is still too focused on the off-grid versus on-grid duality. However, a more innovative approach is already visible in more mature markets: decentralised and distributed systems are not stop-gaps for rural electrification, but rather represent the building blocks of resilient, scalable, and democratised power systems.
ARE’s delegation further discussed how, in this new framework, “off-grid” becomes the cornerstone of at-scale architectures. Thanks to its reliability, flexibility, equity, and climate resilience, these technologies are a real driver of just, bottom-up transitions.
Furthermore, the conversation centred on how community-anchored, interconnection-ready solutions can sit alongside, and ultimately integrate with national planning and regional interconnection ambitions.
Finally, to enrich this regional dialogue, the session also draws comparative insights from Pacific distributed system experiences.
