Southeast Asia’s Energy Transition Brings Biodiversity, Ecosystem, and Health Trade-offs

Southeast Asia’s race to replace fossil fuels could deliver a major public-health dividend—but only if governments prevent the clean-energy transition from creating new ecological and social crises, a systematic review warns. The region is expanding its cities, industries and electricity networks at extraordinary speed, while confronting worsening air pollution, biodiversity loss and unequal access to reliable power. Electricity generation across Southeast Asia has more than tripled over the past two decades and is projected to increase by another 2.5 times by 2050. Yet roughly 72 percent of the region’s electricity still comes from coal and natural gas, linking economic growth to emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. The result is a tightly coupled environmental and medical emergency: polluted air damages ecosystems, increases respiratory and cardiovascular disease, and contributes to premature death.

The review, published in Environmental and Sustainability Indicators, examines how renewable energy and other low-carbon interventions could alter that balance. Its central message is not that decarbonization should be slowed, but that it must be designed as more than an engineering project. Solar farms, wind installations, hydropower schemes, electrification programs and clean-cooking technologies can cut emissions and improve health, yet each may also carry environmental costs depending on where and how it is deployed. The authors describe this as a “dual-edged” transition. A fossil-fuel system imposes widespread pollution and climate harms, while a renewable system can shift some burdens toward land, minerals, habitats and communities located near extraction sites or new infrastructure.

The researchers conducted a systematic literature review following the PRISMA 2020 framework, a widely used standard for making evidence searches transparent and reproducible. They searched Scopus, ScienceDirect, PubMed, Taylor & Francis Online and ProQuest for peer-reviewed studies published from January 2020 through May 2025 in English or Indonesian. Their search combined terms related to renewable and clean energy, public health and Southeast Asian countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The review question was structured using the Population–Exposure–Outcome framework: the population included communities and vulnerable groups; the exposure included renewable energy, electrification and clean cooking; and the outcomes included pollution-related disease, mortality, hospital visits, disability-adjusted life years and broader measures of well-being.

That search began with 2,435 records. After 286 duplicates were removed, 2,149 titles and abstracts were screened independently by reviewers. Most were excluded because they examined inappropriate populations, non-renewable energy, outcomes unrelated to health or study designs that did not meet the review’s requirements. Twenty-nine articles progressed to full-text assessment, and five were excluded during quality appraisal. The final synthesis included 24 studies. Three experts in environmental engineering, public health and energy systems were involved in screening, with disagreements resolved through discussion or adjudication by a third reviewer. The authors also assessed the reliability of reviewer agreement and used design-specific tools to judge the credibility of the included evidence.

This methodological detail matters because the evidence spans very different kinds of research. Some studies used observational or panel-econometric methods to examine relationships between energy systems, pollution and health. Others applied quasi-experimental approaches, such as difference-in-differences analysis, to compare outcomes before and after an intervention or between affected and unaffected groups. Economic evaluations estimated costs and benefits, while life-cycle assessments tracked environmental impacts across the stages of an energy technology. Chemical-transport and risk-assessment models were used to connect emissions with population exposure. Because no single method can capture all dimensions of an energy transition, the review matched appraisal tools to study design, applying Joanna Briggs Institute checklists to several analytical approaches and the CASP framework, alongside ISO standards, to modeling and life-cycle work.

The potential health benefits are substantial. Earlier research examined by the authors indicates that cleaner household cooking methods can reduce health problems by as much as 97 percent in some Southeast Asian settings. Local solar systems have been associated with reductions in community illness of up to 25 percent. These interventions can reduce exposure to smoke from solid fuels, lower concentrations of fine particles and toxic gases, and improve household energy reliability. At the regional scale, replacing coal and gas with lower-emission energy could reduce the pollutants that contribute to asthma, chronic respiratory disease, heart attacks and strokes. The review also connects this logic with Global Burden of Disease analyses, which provide standardized estimates of disease incidence, prevalence and disability-adjusted life years. Such measures allow health gains from decarbonization to be compared across countries and over time rather than treated as isolated local outcomes.

But a technology that is clean at the point of use is not necessarily impact-free across its entire life cycle. Solar panels, batteries, transmission systems and electric vehicles require large quantities of metals and minerals, including copper, cobalt, aluminum, nickel, manganese and rare-earth elements. Mining and processing can transform forests, fragment habitat, contaminate soil and water, and increase pressure on species already threatened by land-use change. Hydropower can alter river flows, block fish migration and inundate ecosystems. Roads, transmission corridors and industrial zones can open previously isolated landscapes to further development. The review therefore places biodiversity and ecosystem health alongside air quality and human disease, arguing that an assessment focused only on operational emissions can overlook damage embedded in supply chains and infrastructure.

This problem is especially important for resource-rich countries such as Indonesia, where nickel extraction and processing are tied to global demand for batteries and renewable technologies. The transition is materially interconnected: economies deploying renewable energy may depend on imported ores and concentrates, while the ecological and health risks of extraction are concentrated in the countries that supply them. Research cited in the review suggests that renewable-energy deployment is associated with greater demand for energy-transition minerals and rare-earth imports in both the short and long term. Supply chains concentrated among a small number of producing and refining countries can create geopolitical and economic vulnerabilities, but they can also produce an uneven geography of environmental harm. The communities living near mines, smelters and transport routes may bear pollution and land disruption even when the climate benefits are realized elsewhere.

That uneven distribution turns the energy transition into an issue of energy justice as well as emissions reduction. Justice involves who receives reliable and affordable electricity, who participates in decisions, whose land is used and who is exposed to pollution or displacement. In Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia, expanding clean-energy access is often treated primarily as a question of distributing benefits. The review argues that participation and representation deserve equal attention. A project can increase national generating capacity while leaving nearby communities without dependable electricity or meaningful influence over its design. It can also shift pollution from urban power plants to rural mining districts, replacing one pattern of environmental inequality with another. Policies that ignore these dynamics risk undermining public trust and reproducing the very inequities a sustainable transition is supposed to reduce.

The study’s bibliometric analysis helps explain why these trade-offs remain difficult to manage. Mapping 381 related publications revealed two largely separate research clusters: one centered on renewable energy, decarbonization and energy transition, and another focused on Southeast Asia, extraction and economic growth. Explicit epidemiological measures and public-health outcomes were weakly connected to both. Energy justice has begun to appear in the literature, but it remains only loosely linked to evidence about who experiences health improvements and who faces new risks. The authors call for a more integrated research agenda that combines epidemiology, ecology, engineering, economics and community participation. For policymakers, the implication is direct: renewable-energy planning should include health-impact assessments, biodiversity safeguards, life-cycle accounting for minerals, transparent consultation and monitoring of vulnerable populations. The goal is not merely to build a low-carbon power system, but to ensure that cleaner energy also produces healthier communities and living ecosystems.