On 22 July, protesters and police clashed outside the Philippine International Convention Center as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio attended an ASEAN meeting in Manila. They were protesting American foreign policy—and Pax Silica, the US-led initiative that could turn New Clark City into a hub for semiconductors, advanced manufacturing and artificial intelligence.
The Philippine government presents the project as a route to higher-value industry, quality jobs and national competitiveness. Residents and civil-society groups have raised concerns over land, water, consultation and the electricity required by planned factories and data centres. A single hyperscale facility could need 300–600 megawatts; the wider development may eventually require around three gigawatts.
Within days, Malacañang said Pax Silica’s provisions could still be amended pending reviews of electricity, water and consultation. The energy department began drafting power rules, while project authorities proposed dedicated generation. In his fifth State of the Nation Address on 27 July, Marcos demanded an immediate amendment to the Electric Power Industry Reform Act so that system-loss charges would no longer be passed to consumers.
These moves were not presented as one causal chain. Together, however, they expose the politics beneath the AI economy: who receives electricity, who finances new infrastructure and which communities carry the risk.
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The Philippines offers Southeast Asia an early warning. ASEAN does not need a single energy or AI bloc. Its diverse members need a shared governance layer that enables national systems to learn from one another, coordinate scarce resources and avoid repeating infrastructure mistakes.
The electricity beneath the AI boom
The International Energy Agency reported that global data-centre electricity consumption rose by 17 per cent in 2025 and could double by 2030. Southeast Asian electricity demand is already growing twice as quickly as overall energy use.
AI infrastructure enters grids already serving industry, households and public services. Governments may offer affordable power to hyperscalers, but manufacturers need reliability and citizens expect acceptable tariffs. Dedicated generation may protect capacity, but new plants, transmission and water systems still require land, capital and legitimacy. If private buyers secure the cleanest supply, other users may be pushed towards more expensive or carbon-intensive electricity.
External shocks sharpen the risk. Singapore produces around 95 per cent of its electricity from imported gas. Higher fuel costs contributed to a 17 per cent increase in its regulated household tariff for the third quarter of 2026. The IEA estimates that Southeast Asia’s fossil-fuel import bill could reach US$245 billion by 2035.
As AI becomes general-purpose economic infrastructure, strategic competition will extend from chips and models to the electricity that keeps compute running. Within ASEAN, it could appear as subsidy races for hyperscalers, emergency export restrictions or public anger when data centres seem protected while household bills rise.
Social licence belongs inside the economics of AI infrastructure. Consultation adds time early; its absence can produce delays, political intervention and stranded assets later. Pax Silica shows how quickly investment can become a legitimacy test.
Different alignments, shared exposure
ASEAN’s geopolitical diversity is already visible in its external AI alignments. Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia and Myanmar became founding members of the China-initiated World AI Cooperation Organization, or WAICO. Singapore and the Philippines are the two ASEAN members of the US-led Pax Silica. No ASEAN member currently belongs to both.
These choices reflect different security relationships, development models and bargaining strategies. Yet they sit inside a wider multiplex digital ecosystem. States choose external partnerships and domestic energy rules. Markets translate those choices into capital flows, factories, data centres and demand for electricity. Communities test their legitimacy when new infrastructure competes for power, water, land or public spending. External alignment shapes where technology and capital come from, not who carries the cost at home.
The Philippines is responding through its own energy mix. After an energy emergency and serious grid alerts, the government adopted a load-based planning framework that assigns technologies to baseload, mid-merit and peaking roles. Marcos has also said that around 200 mostly renewable projects could add up to ten gigawatts, while indigenous gas and nuclear power remain part of the strategy.
Its choices reflect an archipelago with constrained grids, high prices and imported-fuel dependence. Singapore lacks land and imports energy. Laos exports hydropower. Indonesia’s 2025–2034 Electricity Supply Business Plan places renewables and storage at the centre of 76 per cent of planned new capacity. Viet Nam revived the Ninh Thuan nuclear project in November 2024 and placed its implementation under a prime-ministerial steering committee in January 2025 as electricity demand rose faster than earlier projections. No master plan can erase these differences. Can ASEAN instead make national experimentation cumulative?
Pax Silica should generate regional evidence on reserve margins, grid-reinforcement costs and measurable community benefits. Johor’s data centres, Singapore’s earlier moratorium and Viet Nam’s power reforms should enter the same institutional memory. Lessons now remain trapped inside ministries, utilities and bilateral agreements. Another member may discover the same failure only after paying for it.
National sovereignty, regional competitiveness
ASEAN’s electricity is already becoming regional. Singapore plans to import around six gigawatts of low-carbon electricity by 2035. The Lao PDR–Thailand–Malaysia–Singapore Power Integration Project carries hydropower through two transit countries. Seven ASEAN power systems have cross-border connections, although most trade remains bilateral and unidirectional.
The Enhanced ASEAN Power Grid agreement gives this agenda new momentum. Under the Philippines’ 2026 chairmanship, officials are developing task-force plans and submarine-cable frameworks. The May ASEAN summit called for clear governance while respecting national laws and energy sovereignty.
That principle should shape the digital layer. A federated architecture would leave grids and energy choices under national authority while making selected data, contracts and emergency procedures interoperable. Common protocols can coexist with different tariffs, markets and energy mixes.
This is also an economic proposition. For investors and companies, shared visibility over power availability, grid constraints, public safeguards and emergency rules would strengthen business continuity across borders. Firms could build regional manufacturing, supply and compute strategies without reproducing every capability in every market.
Governments would retain domestic capacity without duplicating the entire AI–energy stack. Renewable exporters, manufacturing centres, data-centre hubs and digital-service economies could capture different layers of the value chain. Shared protocols could deepen investment corridors already taking shape, allowing ASEAN economies to compete through specialisation while preserving investment momentum.
What an Energy DPI should do
The ASEAN Power Grid provides the physical rails. An Energy Digital Public Infrastructure would provide the learning, coordination and trust layer above them.
Its learning function would let regulators compare outages, reserve margins, large-load demand, price effects and carbon intensity without exposing sensitive operations. Failed auctions and delayed interconnectors would become regional memory.
Its coordination function would connect registries of generators, interconnectors, storage and large loads. Protocols could cover scheduling, transmission access and emergency curtailment. Countries would retain domestic priorities, but neighbours and investors would know the rules before scarcity arrives.
Its trust function would connect electricity flows with contracts, settlement and renewable-energy certificates. Singapore and the I-TRACK Foundation are already developing a cross-border framework to prevent the same unit of renewable power from being claimed twice, with a regional certificate framework envisaged by 2027.
Public safeguards must sit inside the architecture. Developers should disclose electricity and water demand. Agreements should establish who pays for new infrastructure. Domestic supply floors can protect households, while environmental data reveals whether corporate purchases add renewable capacity or merely reallocate it.
A practical first step would be a Regional Clean Power Passport recording electricity sources, delivery routes, carbon intensity, certificate ownership, grid charges and safeguards. A pilot could begin with LTMS-PIP or the Singapore–Indonesia–Malaysia corridor. Pax Silica could become an early test: if its energy provisions change, ASEAN should be able to see what changed, why and whether the new design protects both industrial ambition and public access.
Governing difference
Other developing regions possess parts of this model: Latin America’s renewables, Africa’s power pools and South Asia’s compute–hydropower link. ASEAN’s opportunity lies in combining data-centre hubs, renewable exporters, manufacturing depth and established energy and digital cooperation.
ASEAN’s advantage lies in protocol power: the capacity to make different national systems interoperable without creating a supranational regulator. In a multiplex digital ecosystem, that power must also govern distribution. Singapore or Johor could capture high-value compute while Laos or Indonesia carries the environmental burden. New Clark City could attract capital while nearby communities absorb changes in land, water and energy access.
Energy DPI would function as regional competitiveness infrastructure by giving national systems earlier warning of scarcity and evidence from policies tested elsewhere. It would also reveal when a domestic choice begins shifting costs or risks across borders. Physical interconnection without such visibility could merely move vulnerability across borders.
The contest over AI-era electricity has already begun. ASEAN’s strongest advantage may be its ability to govern difference well enough that diversity becomes resilience—and industrial ambition does not outrun the societies expected to power it.
