ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the general development of renewable energy (RE) policy in East Asia set in its global context. It explores how RE policy has evolved over time in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, as well as how RE policy-making has become increasingly framed on new developmentalist strategic plans. More generally, in East Asia's most developed economies the Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore-renewable development has been overtly technology oriented and also more preoccupied with fostering strategic industry capacity for production and export, rather than expanding installed capacity for generating electricity. The chapter focuses on the growing public support for the RE policies and low carbon development, generally in East Asia. At the same time, energy state-owned enterprises (SOE) remain an important extension of the government's RE policy across the many parts of East Asia, most significantly in China.
