Fossil fuel lock-in vs clean power: pathways for the developing Asian region by 2050-2060

Rapidly growing electricity demand and entrenched fossil-fuel infrastructure in South and Southeast Asia require urgent attention to avoid a long-term lock-in to a high-emissions pathway. National power-sector expansion plans mostly remain supply-side centric and overlook the potential contribution of demand-side efficiency and flexibility. This study addresses this gap by evaluating how four emerging Asian economies can decarbonize their power sectors between 2050 and 2060. Two national-scale models, PyPSA-BD-IDS and PyPSA-TH-IDS, are developed for Bangladesh and Thailand, complemented by a literature synthesis for India and Indonesia, to assess techno-economic feasibility, land use, financial resource mobilization needs, employment, and stranded-asset risk across pledged and higher-ambition scenarios. All four countries can reach clean power systems around mid-century (2050 for Bangladesh, India, and Thailand, and 2060 for Indonesia) through nationally determined pathways. For Bangladesh and Thailand, integrating energy efficiency and demand-side flexibility generates economy-wide ∼7%–33% more jobs, including both direct and indirect, and reduces fossil-fuel dependency and avoids supply-side capacity overbuild. These yield ∼21%–40% lower emissions than the supply-side-only pathway across the milestone years to 2050. The integrated pathway reduces the supply-side financial resource mobilization need by ∼44%–48% and roughly halves land requirements. Published Indian pathways show the same pattern: DSF integration lowers storage needs and system costs, easing lock-in risk. Indonesia, assessed using the literature on a supply-side-only pathway, requires ∼1034 GW installed capacity and ∼€136 billion cumulative investment by 2060. Across all four countries, the predominance of a young coal fleet (227 GW added in the past two decades), unequal investment capacity, and spatially concentrated fossil-sector employment pose special challenges to a just transition. The integrated pathway in Bangladesh and India reduces the need for supply-side annual investment compared to the 2025 investment level, while for Thailand, it is very close but higher than the planned investment level.