What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

ACEN completed in 2022 the first in the world market-based energy transition mechanism (ETM) for the early retirement of a 246MW coal plant. Through this ETM, the useful life of the plant will be cut in half, saving up to 50 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, and the proceeds to the company, in the amount of US$133m, will enable the construction of a 600MW solar plant. The ETM is a concept developed by the Asian Development Bank, which aims to leverage low-cost and long-term funding geared towards early coal retirement and the reinvestment of proceeds to enable renewable energy projects. The company’s ETM is unique as it did not use any concessional funding, but instead relied on the domestic private sector. Structuring and execution were done by the in-house legal team.

Why are in-house lawyers well-placed to drive change in their organisations?    

In-house lawyers are in a unique position of having a holistic view of the company, having to navigate across business operations, regulatory compliance, and stakeholder and government relations. Having this interdisciplinary exposure provides us an ideal platform to influence these various aspects of the organisation. Furthermore, the role of in-house lawyers has evolved from simply advising about the law to providing critical inputs on strategy. Our presence from inception of the project to completion and beyond gives us a balanced perspective of how change can be properly implemented. For example, in the ETM structure, it is not sufficient to divest the coal asset, the documentation and closing of which is generally within the domain of lawyers, we also need to ensure a proper just transition of the plant, by ensuring an effective workforce evolution, community resilience, and collaboration with stakeholders.

If existent, can you talk about you or your company’s efforts on renewability, sustainability, or other environmentally friendly activities?  

ACEN has committed to achieve Net Zero by 2050 and to transition its energy generation portfolio to 100% renewable energy by 2025. It is the first energy company in Southeast Asia to announce its Net Zero roadmap that includes near-term scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets, aligned with a 1.5°C pathway for the power sector. Towards this goal it has successfully implemented the ETM for the early retirement of a coal plant, it currently has 98% attributable capacity from renewable energy technologies, and it plans to build 20GW of renewable energy projects by 2030.