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Kathryn Chelminski, "Governing Energy Transitions: A Study of Regime Complex Effectiveness on Geothermal Development in Indonesia and the Philippines" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
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Dr. Catherine Shalminski
The New Books Network.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Catherine Shalminski about her book titled Governing Energy Transitions, A Study of Regime Complex Effectiveness on Geothermal Development in Indonesia and the Philippines, published by Cambridge University Press in 2025. Now, this book takes us into a really important topic because every country is grappling with dealing with climate change, mitigating the effects, trying to adapt to the future. And so it makes a lot of sense to analyse how that's actually being undertaken. And that book, this book helps us get into some of those details, looking, as the title suggests, at Indonesia and the Philippines individually and a comparison, we'll get into that, taking a. What could be kind of a really technical topic, I suppose, buried in policy papers and excavating and analyzing it so that this idea of energy transition that's so important and so often in the headlines can be understood more than just sort of 300 words in a news bulletin.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
We can properly get into detail to get to grips with what's going on. So, Katherine, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast to tell us about your book.
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Dr. Catherine Shalminski
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really thrilled to be speaking with you today.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
I'm very pleased to have you. Could you start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?
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Dr. Catherine Shalminski
Absolutely. I'm a visiting fellow at the Brown University Climate Solutions Lab. I received my PhD in International Relations at the Graduate Institute of International Development Studies in Geneva, and I've worked in academia, the clean energy industry and government, as well as international organizations over the last decade. This book was inspired by my time in Geneva, Switzerland, not only because I was studying international relations for my doctorate, but also Geneva itself is a global hub for multilateralism. And at the time there was a kind of some of the cracks in multilateralism were showing the US had exited from the Kyoto Protocol and is just one example. And so I was interested in studying what this meant for international cooperation and for solving important issues like climate change. I had also noticed that there was increasingly proliferation of organizations working on international energy issues and climate change in the 2010s in particular. And so I was interested to understand how this proliferation and kind of emerging complex governance evolved and catalyzed change, especially in the absence of a formal regime where there was an absence of kind of international treaties for climate change that were covering every country in the world. And so I wanted to write a book to illuminate the impacts of clean energy governance in particular. And the other aspect of this was really understanding how the governance affected developing countries, energy transitions in the Global south in particular. And this has become a really hot topic because the current and projected emissions of emerging markets in developing economies, which I'll refer to as EMDEs, is really enormous. The IMF estimates that EMDS represent 2/3 of global emissions. And As a category, EMDs represent over 100 countries and 90% of global population and 40% of the global economy. These countries are going through rapid urbanization, industrial growth, and have rising energy needs. And so it's really important then to understand how these countries will play into achieving emissions reduction goals and finding ways to help transition a lot of these countries towards cleaner fuels. And so it's estimated that in order to help EMDs achieve emissions reduction goals that almost $4 trillion and annual climate finances needed between now and 2030. And a part of this is also trying to understand how investment and climate finance has been distributed across the world. A lot of investment to date have been concentrated in larger EMDs like China, India and Brazil. And so I was interested in looking at some of the underdogs or under researched cases of large carbon emitters like Indonesia. And to understand also some of the under researched technologies like geothermal. A lot of the limelight has been on hydro, wind and solar, but there's other really exciting and important technologies like geothermal technologies that will be integral to the global energy transition. And so all this together really sparked my interest in understanding how the emerging global governance for clean Energy is helping EMDEs meet their needs to reduce emissions and support deployment of climate mitigating technologies on the ground.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
That is a very helpful introduction. Thank you for starting us off with that. Loads of threads there for us to pull as we continue our discussion. But of course those are some pretty big topics and kind of big picture goals to go into a project with as well, which makes sense, right? We all start projects like that. So as you went into these ideas in more detail, what sorts of questions more specifically did you end up asking in the book and how did you develop them?
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Dr. Catherine Shalminski
For sure, yes, lots to dig out there. So the book tackles two levels of inquiry. I approach it from an international relations theory perspective focused on the effectiveness of complex governance for climate and clean energy. And secondly, I've empirically focused on the domestic barriers to energy transitions and EMDEs. And so taking the first level of inquiry at the core of this book, I'm investigating whether in the absence of a binding multilateral treaty or a formal regime, can complex governance be effective? And how, what are the conditions under which this complex governance can affect change on the ground? A lot of the literature focused on international regimes essentially says that you need a binding treaty with mechanisms with legal teeth to enforce compliance. But then if we look at complex governance in the absence of this binding treaty, what are the mechanisms that catalyze change, whether through the changing behavior of states or solving a problem that they were created to solve. And so research, plentiful research on this by Haas, Victor, Young and Levy, looking at different ways to operationalize effectiveness of formal regimes. And so that's focusing on solving problems, enforcing compliance and changing behavior. But less has been written about the ways to measure effective of regime complexes, which are these overlapping proliferation of institutions that in an issue area that essentially form a governance arrangement. And so the second part of the book looks or the second level of inquiry is focused on the empirical and so it looks at under what conditions the clean energy regime complex can affect change and impact an energy transition on the ground and whether the clean energy regime complex through forms of climate finance policy advising capacity building can help recipient countries and EMDEs overcome barriers to energy transitions. And the other part of this inquiry that is really important kind of drawing between these two levels of investigation is taking the international regime complex literature and expanding to look at how does it impact domestic politics. So a lot of the literature on regime complexes has been focused on the formation and evolution of regime complexes at an international level. So how are these international organizations proliferating? How does it form? What kind of structures does it form? And less has been focused on how that affects change at a domestic level. And so I draw from some of the literature on two level games by Putnam and domestic politics by Milner to really understand how does the international affect the state level and then the domestic level to affect change.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
All right, that is I think the other key piece we need to lay out how you're approaching these questions and kind of the different layers of the analysis. But of course one could, maybe someone will, right, take all those things you've just told us and apply them to countries beyond this analysis you've conducted. And obviously no one can do all of that analysis you've just described with every country. That wouldn't really work. So clearly a case study approach is going to make a lot of sense. Why did you choose Indonesia and the Philippines as yours?
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Dr. Catherine Shalminski
It's a great question. So Indonesia and the Philippines are both EMDEs that are really under researched cases compared to the other big bricks like China, Brazil and India. Indonesia though is a major carbon emitter. It's actually the fifth largest carbon emitter in the world, which is largely due to deforestation and land clearing to develop palm oil. Indonesia is also a major global oil producer and exporter in particular from the 60s to the early 2000s. And it's now one of the world's largest coal producers. And so it's a really interesting case to look at energy transitions because this history and present of fossil fuel production is seen as an obstacle to achieving energy transition goals. It's also one of the most populated countries in the world with 280 million people. Looking at Indonesia and where its comparative advantage for renewable energy development digging in geothermal technology of choice. It's abundant in geothermal resources. It's considered to have 40% of the world's reserves in geothermal resources. And as I was studying interested to study the clean energy regime complex development impacts in Indonesia, I was then interested to look at the impacts on geothermal development. And it was really fitting to study Both Indonesia and the Philippines, as they are the second and third largest producers of geothermal in the world after the US and the Philippines, offers a really interesting contrasting case. It has much more climate vulnerability and energy insecurity than Indonesia, but for decades it was the second largest producer of geothermal in the world after the US and was only recently surpassed by Indonesia. And so this comparison and variation across cases is a very interesting puzzle to examine. Both countries are located along the Ring of Fire in Southeast Asia, which is a seismically active area known for high volcanic activity and abundance in geothermal resources. The puzzle then is across these cases, if the Philippines is the second largest producer in the world, despite the fact that Indonesia has superior reserves, and Indonesia has by far more untapped geothermal capacity that has not yet been developed. And so the kind of nuance and the competition between these two countries for the place of the second largest producer in the world was a really interesting case. And of course, looking at the domestic politics on the ground that have enabled or hindered an energy transition was ripe for study. When we dig into the political economy of these cases, we find they're really important aspects of variation, principally the natural resource abundance of the countries diverges, as I mentioned. So Indonesia has a long history as an oil and gas producer and a net exporter and part of OPEC until 2008, whereas the Philippines does not have plentiful abundance in domestic resources of oil and gas and depends heavily on import, which is a major aspect of energy insecurity. Nevertheless, both countries have begun their energy transitions kind of at different phases, and both countries have received billions in climate finance dedicated to geothermal development. And additionally, both countries have experienced energy crises that have been an important factor and played an important role across both cases. And so there's a lot to study across these cases, and they were really interesting to focus on for this book.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
That is a very helpful description of why those two case studies, as you said, they might be under researched, but when you describe why they're worth researching, there's a whole bunch of reasons that they make sense individually and definitely in comparison, which we will get to. But before we go too far into detail about Indonesia or the Philippines, can we talk a little bit more about what the clean energy regime complex is and how it developed over time?
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Dr. Catherine Shalminski
Absolutely. The clean energy regime complex is defined as a sphere of governance surrounding the clean energy issue area that's characterized by proliferating and overlapping international institutions and fragmented complex governance, but lacking a formalized hierarchical structure that's centered around a multilateral treaty or a formal regime. The clean energy regime complex evolved kind of situated between the climate change regime and the energy regime. The subsequent governance structure following this proliferation of initiatives and expansion of intergovernmental organizations into the clean energy issue domain resembles a regime complex. It combines multilateral, bilateral and transnational actors that are involved in the diffusion of renewable energy development technologies and diffusion of renewable energy norms for legislation and policy adoption. The clean energy regime complex diffuses norms around technology deployment and provides policy advising, climate finance and technical training to help reduce barriers and help support speed the deployment of clean energy technologies to mitigate climate change. And in particular in EMDEs. I would argue that the emergence of the clean energy regime complex was driven by a combination of a few different factors, including dissatisfaction among state interests, which has led to the proliferation of new institutions, the diffusion of norms leading to normative change among states, and finally, the convergence of state interests in support of the institutionalization of clean energy development through multilateral channels. And so, in the book, I examine the evolution of the clean energy regime complex across three periods. The first period looks at this initial state dissatisfaction with existing regimes, which provided impetus for existing institutions to expand into new areas to meet state demands and needs, the rise of new institutions to govern clean energy. But it also represents this point of fracture in the multilateral system with the exit of the US from the Kyoto Protocol and this fragmentation. Then, in the multilateral cooperation on climate change that has led to forum shopping. The proliferation of a lot of institutions allows states to kind of join whichever international organizations and agreements make the most sense for their domestic interests. Then, in the second phase and second period that I study, I look at how this institutional proliferation and interaction created normative change. So this period is marked by the rise of transnational governance, the creation of organizations like REN21 and REAP, but continued efforts by the European Union and other countries to foster international cooperation through multilateral channels. Then in period three, we see the convergence of state interests that has kind of, I argue, been a result of normative change in favor of the institutional institutionalization of clean energy objectives. Do you see the creation of organizations like IRENA and Sustainable Energy for All Initiative? I mark this period as the emergence of the clean energy regime complex. Through the book, I follow these changes over time in the international institutional landscape, now characterized as fragmented. The really important point between looking at this evolution of this institutional landscape and then the empirical case studies is to understand how does fragmentation matter in terms of how it will result in changes on the ground in recipient countries. So we'll see more gaps in some areas and overlaps in others. The overlaps of institutions that are doing common functions like providing finance or providing policy advising may have turf wars in other functional areas when this can impact the availability of finance and development aid to support EMDEs in transitioning to net zero. It can also mean uneven access around the world and so that is in short, how the clean energy regime complex developed over time and why it matters.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, it's definitely clear why it matters, but it raises a methodological question of there's a lot going on there. How can the effectiveness of things like complex governance structures in that context be assessed?
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Dr. Catherine Shalminski
Yes, definitely. It is all about operationalization. So I operationalize the clean energy regime complex effectiveness through three main mechanisms. I look at these as kind of functional mechanisms. So we have the utility modifier mechanism, social learning mechanism and capacity building mechanism. And the utility modifier mechanism is essentially finance, the provision of finance. So looking at development aid project level finance that can support for instance a geothermal company that's in development and needs additional support. Social learning mechanism, in contrast, is more focused on policy advising and norm diffusion. So for instance, the World bank policy advising with government ministries or funding that's allocated to regulatory reform or ongoing work with government ministries on how to implement particular incentive programs to solve Regulatory or financial barriers. And the third mechanism, capacity building, is focused on building technical capacity, so providing training to ministries, providing workforce development, and essentially trying to institutionalize these changes. So where the utility modifier mechanism can provide finance to one project, the capacity building mechanism is trying to ensure that there's long term change that can last beyond when a project is completed and that it can kind of help usher in a different transformative change in the country towards energy transitions. And another important aspect of this is looking at how the regime complex can support the convergence of domestic political interests. So taken together, this regime complex and these across these mechanisms can help incentivize renewable energy development and an energy transition across diverging special interest groups and try to foster broader based political support for policies or technology. Subsidization can provide incentives or norms diffused to alleviate vested interests that block or stall renewable energy development or renewable energy policy adoption. And through these mechanisms, this is how the I conceptualize how a regime complex can affect change at a domestic level and at a sub national level through the provision of development aid by multilateral and bilateral funders, development banks and other international and transnational actors. The recipients of this aid are the EMDEs. So the funding is kind of allocated at a country level, but then it trickles down to government ministries and bureaucracies and the technical bureaucrats as well as the industries that benefit from the energy transition. So renewable energy development, geothermal developers in this case. And then ultimately, how do we measure impact? There's many, as I mentioned earlier, there's a few different ways to measure effectiveness. And I decided to go with the approach of problem solving. So if the clean energy regime complex is ultimately trying to enable and catalyze energy transitions, then we look at how effective is the clean energy regime complex in catalyzing energy transition in the recipient country in EMDEs. So in this case, I looked at geothermal development in Indonesia and the Philippines and examined how the clean energy regime complex addresses barriers to geothermal development. Has the funding and policy advising targeted and resolved part of the multiplicity of financial and regulatory and capacity barriers to development or not? The ultimate outcome and measure that I use is kind of twofold, looking at the growth and installed geothermal capacity. So has there been a change over time? And then also looking at the implementation of regulatory reform. So this is not just setting targets that you know, will reduce emissions by x percent by this date, or we set a goal of achieving X this many gigawatts of installed capacity. It actually has to be implemented and all the way to the Local level in a way that's actionable. Policy targets are great and important, but I look in the book at the implementation all the way to adoption and then into actionable change on the ground. There's yes, many different ways to measure how effective a clean energy regime complex could be or regime complex generally, but those are the ways that I try to operationalize effectiveness and change.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Very helpful to understand the many things going on there in the book, but it does make me realize that I asked you about the case studies in terms of countries, but we haven't really talked about why geothermal as a sector is the area you particularly focus on. I mean, you did mention earlier that it's generally under researched and probably shouldn't be. But are there any other key reasons we should understand for this focus?
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Dr. Catherine Shalminski
Absolutely. I'm really excited to talk about geothermal energy. Geothermal energy is a mature technology. It's been around for at least 70 years, at least in indirect use for creating electricity through power plants and even longer for direct use. So using geothermal power for heating. There have been recent technological advancements taking place, marking our new renaissance of geothermal energy development, which is really exciting. But a really important aspect of why geothermal is so important is that study is that it provides baseload power, which is a good substitute for fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal. And it's not intermittent like solar and wind. So it avoids that issue with duck Curve. It's also a clean renewable resource and the technology itself has been deployed in Indonesia and the Philippines since at least the 1970s. And it's really fitting for analysis across the two case studies owing to the relative abundance in both countries of geothermal resources. And it also provides a lot of insight. So even though it's different than the wind and solar technologies, it has a lot of commonalities in terms of regulatory barriers, land access issues, technical capacity barriers. And I think one of the aspects of geothermal that are that differentiates geothermal in terms of what makes it challenging to develop is it has comparatively high risks and costs of early stage exploration and development, often without appropriately matched financial mechanisms. And so there's a really high risk associated with exploration drilling. And so it makes it kind of a prime technology for support from the international development banks and essentially the clean energy regime complex. To help unlock some of these barriers, I was interested to study how geothermal technologies can play a really significant role in enabling us to meet global net zero targets. In the book, I focus on large scale geothermal technology for electricity production to help fill this gap and geothermal energy, like I said, provides baseload power. It's also feasible for flexible operation in support of electricity grid stability. And it presents an opportunity to replace this sturdy baseload power, like coal plants with 24, seven carbon free, firm and dispatchable power that can operate year round at high capacity factors, which is really just a tremendous opportunity. And as I mentioned, geothermal technologies are experiencing this renaissance of technological advancements and a lot of attention as of late. And it's been advancing drilling technologies from oil and gas and fusion research to enable new opportunities in geothermal drilling. And so traditional geothermal drilling technologies were quite limited geographically to areas with high quality sequences, steam. So high heat and low acidity resources. And these resources are concentrated in certain areas around the world, often with high volcanic activity along tectonic plate boundaries, such as along the Ring of Fire, like in Indonesia and the Philippines. The new geothermal technology advancements could unlock geothermal potential around the world. Enhanced geothermal drilling is, is one such technology that applies hydraulic fracking techniques at greater depths and higher heat than traditional geothermal technologies. And so this is potentially unlocking a lot of new opportunities for scaling geothermal around the world with support from R and D as these technologies become more widely available. And there's really a tremendous opportunity of potential for geothermal development in EMDEs, particularly with support from development aid and international institutions to play this critical role in de risking private investment.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Okay, so we've got geothermal as being a really key thing to focus on here and kind of the way in which it's both mature, but then has some sort of key potential limitations or maybe challenging areas is helpful to keep in mind as well. If we turn to talking about sort of all of these things, right? International structures, regime complexes, domestic politics, geothermal. What does all of that look like entangled in Indonesia?
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Dr. Catherine Shalminski
Yes. So as I mentioned, the most expensive and high risk phase of geothermal development is exploration drilling. This is not just in Indonesia, but around the world. The quality of preliminary surveys, so surveys of geological potential for geothermal and having good data can help reduce some of this risk. But the quality of these surveys and availability of the data varies pretty dramatically from country to country. And it can also become out of date with some limited quality or limited data on geological surveys of geothermal resources in Indonesia. This can increase the risk of development. And so essentially there's four phases of development. So very briefly, the first stage is the preliminary survey. So this identifies the resources and potential for geothermal. And there is a high risk associated with this stage, but it's only costs around $1 million per project. But the second stage is exploration drilling, which is kind of the feasibility. It's really the, the well testing that helps identify resources and identify if it's going to be a productive well. This is extremely high risk and high financing risk as well. So the cost of this stage of development ranges between 25 to $50 million per project. And so, and there's about a 25% success rate. So that means that a developer can invest in exploration drilling of a well and 75% of the wells are not going to be successful. So they invest 25 to $50 million and don't know if what the outcome is going to be. So this kind of identifies the risk. And then there's two more stages. We have the delineation drilling and construction, which are also very costly but much lower risk because they've already identified the resources at that stage. And so in Indonesia there has been a focus from the international development community and de risking exploration drilling in particular to spur geothermal development and attract private investment. And so this has been a focus of multilateral development banks and other bilateral and multilateral donors. There's also a history of failed financing mechanisms to help address this issue. And there has been kind of a mismatch which I detail in the book between some of these financing mechanisms and the needs on the ground, whether the type of companies and the size of companies and their financial needs versus what is actually available with the financing mechanisms that kind of combined or is a blend of public and private finance. So the creation recently of the World Bank's Geothermal Resources Risk Mitigation Project, GREM is a great example of this utility modifier and social learning mechanism at work. And so the GREM was created in 2019. It's a risk sharing facility that leverages $4 billion in investments in steam production, drilling and power plant construction to help reduce the risk of exploration drilling. And it uses this, you know, quote unquote innovative financing mechanism. But the actual mechanism itself is not that innovative. It's used in many cases. So it's a financing mechanism that uses equity and debt in a special purpose vehicle. And if the drilling produces high quality resources, equity investors share the profits. If the wells are not productive, the SPV value is reduced to zero and losses are pooled. And so since the success rate is typically 25%, then the successful projects would help cover the losses of the 75% of unsuccessful projects. And this makes this risk sharing facility a long term self funding solution for Exploration drilling. And so the provision of this mechanism actually took many years to implement because it required buy in from the government of Indonesia. There was a lot of challenges around reframing loss. So those 75% of unsuccessful projects in using government public funding for funding, part of that it was problematic. And it took years of policy dialogues between World bank staff and the government of Indonesia to reframe this loss to actually not so much of a loss. Because even if you have an unsuccessful project, you gain data and it provides a value add by contributing this data to the current projects and future projects and helps better price project loans. And so it's really a win win. And through this many years of policy dialogues and relationship building and kind of reframing of loss versus value added data, it was ultimately successful in helping change the way that the government approached the public support for exploration drilling and de risking this really important phase of development. In fact, by 2021, the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources MEMR started an exploration drilling program including the survey, construction of roads and contracting out this slim hole drilling. This really represents a shift in the way that the government was approaching de risking around exploration drilling and prioritizing this very important phase of development. Much of that I argue in the book is through this history of clean energy regime complex involvement. And there are actors that are part of this clean energy regime complex and active in Indonesia. And so this impact is then demonstrated through the creation of a government led geothermal exploration drilling program and buy into the grem. And it really provided strong evidence, I argued, of the impact of the clean energy regime complex through the social learning mechanism and the utility modifier mechanism. Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today.
- [38:25]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
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Dr. Catherine Shalminski
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
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- [39:49]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Did all this complexity look like over in the Philippines? I'll ask you to compare them in a moment, but if you could kind of make sure we understand what's going on there first.
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Dr. Catherine Shalminski
Yeah, absolutely. So the Philippines is quite a different case and it had developed much of its geothermal capacity decades ago with the help of international support. More recent developments have focused on ways to modernize the geothermal market and make geothermal more competitive and attract private investors. But starting off in the early early days in the 60s there was involvement by the UN Special Fund. UNDP helped finance a pre investment study on power and it evaluated geothermal potential alongside other energy resources. The government of New Zealand provided through bilateral support around 21 million in grants between 1973 and 85 for geothermal exploration. And there was a lot of technical support and technical assistance from New Zealand as well to the state owned enterprises in the Philippines back in the 60s, 70s and 80s. And so this bilateral cooperation helped provide hands on training on drilling techniques, reservoir assessment methods and really helped build up the domestic technical capacity in Commville. The national power Corporation, PNOC and EDC which is the geothermal arm of the state owned enterprise in the Philippines. And more recently there have been really interesting developments that have occurred. So much owing to international support and the early prioritization of geothermal resources in the Philippines. Geothermal took off and the Philippines became the second largest producer of geothermal in the world. And it was very much due to prioritization of geothermal as a technology to meet the country's domestic energy needs. Due to energy shocks and energy crises that were going on in the 60s and 80s and 90s, the government had to pivot and find some domestic resources and much owing to political entrepreneurship in the country. At the time, geothermal was selected as the technology to support. But since the government has developed a lot of its geothermal primary geothermal resources, there is about estimated to be 50% left of potential to develop. But the actual remaining potential is more of the secondary resources. So less high heat, higher acidity which can make the resources more costly to develop. Since the early development of geothermal, the Philippines has been receiving some support to help restructure the compensation and kind of remove some of the other barriers to develop geothermal development. And more recently, the Asian Development bank has been exploring supporting revolving risk mitigation Fund in the Philippines as well to help support early exploration drilling. And so there's a longer history early development of geothermal development in the Philippines and now kind of a resurgence and a desire to really remove the barriers to develop the remaining resources in the Philippines with international support.
- [43:39]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
So just from what you've told us, and obviously the book has way more detail, there's a lot of interesting points of comparison between the two countries. But from your perspective of having been embedded in all of this research, what do you think are the most significant comparisons between the two?
- [43:55]
Dr. Catherine Shalminski
Yes. So Sam, the main differences between the two countries, I would first start off by saying is the resources, the natural resource abundance across the two countries. As I mentioned earlier, Indonesia has a wealth of fossil fuel resources, which, you know, it was a net exporter of oil until 2008 and then it shifted to being a net importer, which marked this major turning point in the country and at the at which point it started to prioritize diversification. The Philippines, in contrast, did not have abundant fossil fuel resources and had a lot of energy insecurity. Later had energy shocks and energy crises that necessitated investment in domestic resources. So it prioritized geothermal earlier. So I think the natural resource abundance and domestic political economy really played a huge role in how the countries prioritized energy security or solving energy security through diversification. The other kind of aspects are and differences are when the resources were developed. So a lot of the resources that were developed in the Philippines under an authoritarian regime with guaranteed offtake by state owned enterprise. And in Indonesia the resources were developed more recently under a democracy. And so both countries are democracies. I think the structure of the democracies also is a really important nuance that I talk about in the book. So governance of energy at the national and subnational level. So Indonesia is a decentralized government and the Philippines is a centralized government. And this can have really important impacts for permitting, tendering and implementation of regulations at a local level. And it can also have an impact on rent seeking. And so that is something that is really important to understand the case of Indonesia and some barriers to implementation of renewable energy directives which the Philippines did not have to overcome. And then another aspect, another facet that is a really important variation across the cases is the role, it's a commonality and a difference, the role of state owned enterprises. So the Philippines now has a fully privatized electricity sector following the adoption of Epira in 2001. And as I mentioned though, a lot of the resources were developed previously before the privatization of the electricity sector. Now that the country is trying to develop remaining resources, this is now under a privatized electricity sector. And so generators, geothermal generators have had to compete in the spot market against coal. And more recently, the country adopted a green energy auction which allows geothermal to kind of compete against geothermal for costs, which helps alleviate some of those barriers. In Indonesia, state owned enterprises still play a major role. So it's not a fully privatized electricity market. Pln, the national utility company, plays a major role for geothermal offtake. But overall the electricity market and political economy structure around energy development in both countries are very different. And I talk about those differences throughout the book. Then the last difference that I want to talk about today is about geothermal and market maturity. I mentioned that Indonesia has a lot of untapped capacity. It is estimated that Indonesia developed around 11% of its potential capacity. The potential in Indonesia for geothermal development is estimated around 23 gigawatts of potential. It's only developed 2.6 gigawatts at least at the time of publication. Whereas in the Philippines, they, it's estimated, have developed more than 49% or around 50% of potential capacity. So they've developed around 2 gigawatts of the 4 gigawatts of potential. And then where these two countries are in developing these resources also matters. So like I said, the Indonesia has a lot of primary resources left, so those are less costly to develop. Whereas the Philippines, if they're a secondary, there may still be some primary resources left. They're undergoing some more investigation of exploration or geological surveys to determine that. But overall the secondary resources are much more costly to develop and that kind of changes the game. And so they're really great countries to compare. But it's just important to understand the differences in the history of geothermal development over time and where each country is respectively in their market maturity and trajectory. And I think this matter is very important for matching the financial mechanisms and policy advising mechanisms on the ground to the domestic political economy factors in each country.
- [49:30]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Thank you for tackling a very big question of how to compare two complicated sets of policies in and of themselves and realities with us. I wonder if we can talk a little bit more about kind of where you were ending in that aspect around what doing this kind of analysis of each country and the comparison can kind of let us look at going forward and maybe improve or avoid some traps around what are the key implications of this research.
- [49:57]
Dr. Catherine Shalminski
So this research sheds light on how complex governance can impact domestic politics through these mechanisms of effectiveness. This analysis really helps illuminate how does the global governance and complex governance have an impact on the ground and can it be effective and under what conditions? In the book, across these cases, I find that yes, it can be effective if political will is available at the domestic level. So without political will and political entrepreneurship, there will be no change. And so I find that I look at the impact of these mechanisms on the ground and how they affect change. But the book also kind of delves into the important role that domestic political interests and political will in favor of energy transitions play. And a really big part of that is, is the country undergoing energy shocks? Are there energy security aspects that they need to address that are kind of catalyzing the need for diversification? And that was important both in the case of Indonesia and the Philippines, and really determined at what point the government started to prioritize the energy transition and invest in geothermal energy as the technology to help solve energy insecurity and to help facilitate an energy transition. And so throughout the cases, I see variable levels of effectiveness, which depends on this convergence or divergence of political interests in favor of the energy transition. Overall, the cases revealed how these mechanisms can address financial regulatory capacity barriers for energy transitions. And overall, the book demonstrates the importance of incorporating domestic politics as a major indicator of regime complex effectiveness, particularly in the realm of global energy transition to net zero. And so using this problem solving approach to measuring effectiveness in promoting energy transitions and EMDEs, we see how the clean energy regime complex can enable EMDs to implement changes necessary to to start shifting towards net zero at the domestic level. And so it is critical then to understand not only the interaction between international and domestic politics, but also the conditions under which regime complexes can be effective or ineffective in promoting change at the domestic level. I would say the other aspect of this is to also the other implications are that complex governance fragmentation and these overlapping institutions at the international level can create these turf wars and gaps. And so you can have a lot of organizations that are working in recipient countries that are not coordinated and sometimes providing duplicative resources and support. And there's big gaps in other areas. And so, you know, I kind of wrapped the book with a call for greater coordination on the ground, because it really does matter in the effectiveness of implementation.
- [53:10]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that's definitely an important point to emphasize at the end of the book and I think also the end of our conversation about the book leading me with just the final question of what you might be working on now that the book is out in the world. Whether you've got anything on your desk you want to give us a sneak preview of.
- [53:26]
Dr. Catherine Shalminski
Yes, very exciting. So I'm actually taking the book's theoretical framework and empirical studies in a couple of different directions. So one project is working on new research that applies this theoretical framework of regime complex effectiveness to other cases beyond clean energy. So how generalizable is the regime complex effectiveness framework to other cases like ocean biodiversity governance? And so I'm looking at how these mechanisms extend beyond clean energy. How does the regime complex structure manage different problems, particularly where development aid is allocated to EMDEs? And how does it help facilitate changed behavior in a domestic political economy? How does it address barriers and how does it affect change? That's one major project and the other is an extension of the empirical case studies. As I was researching geothermal development in both Indonesia and the Philippines, the siting and land use considerations was really an important aspect, particularly because a lot of the geothermal resources overlapped with ancestral land. And so how do countries manage thoughtful justice considerations with the transition? And so the paper looks at how does contestation over the siting of renewable energy projects on ancestral land, but up against whatever state level institutions are available for protecting their interests, and does this lead to more just transition outcomes? And so in this paper I study cases of geothermal development in Indonesia and the Philippines and compare that to lithium extraction in South America. And so those are two major projects and really a direct extension of this book which has brought forth a lot of really interesting insights. And there's a wealth of empirics to study in these countries. So looking forward to sharing that work soon?
- [55:35]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, no, plenty to keep you busy there. And for any listeners who want to get more information about the work that's already been published by you in this area to maybe preview what's coming next, the book we've been discussing is titled Governing Energy A Study of Regime Complex Effectiveness on Geothermal Development in Indonesia and the Philippines, published by Cambridge University Press in 2025. Catherine, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [56:01]
Dr. Catherine Shalminski
Thank you so much for having me. It was really a delay.