Blueleaf COO Rides the Long Game in Clean Energy

There is something pragmatic about Amiram Roth-Deblon’s idealism that dovetails with his endurance athleticism.

Years before his current role as the chief operating officer of independent power producer (IPP) Blueleaf Energy, which he joined in 2023, Amiram was an activist engineering a climate campaign in the run-up to the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit; he was an environmentalist who spent 14 months in Africa visiting projects for forest protection and renewable energy; he was a sustainable transport advocate who chose to hitch a ride back from Africa to Germany on a containership to save on emissions, almost missing a job interview in the process.

And yet Amiram is as far removed as one can be from the fire and fury of a placard-waving eco-warrior. His unflappable demeanor jibes more closely with his other identity as an endurance athlete who racked up 11,000 km of cycling mileage during his Africa sojourn, who once cycled from Berlin to India and back, and who still runs a half-marathon distance every week.

Endurance sports rarely favor players driven by emotional outbursts. The equanimity that drives Amiram’s endurance feats seems to underpin his pragmatic approach to work as well.

“The cool thing about renewables is that companies in this space are still largely purpose-driven, but at the end of the day, they still have to be commercially viable,” Amiram said.

As one of Asia-Pacific’s largest IPPs, Blueleaf Energy is certainly no aspirational start-up. The Macquarie Asset Management fund-owned firm has 2 GW of track record globally and the capital backing to build out 10 GW of onshore renewables in Asia by 2030.

Unlike the typical developer seeking capital gains from asset sales, a key focus for Blueleaf is to own, develop and operate renewable energy assets for the long term.

“As the long-term asset owner, you look at things differently. Quality, long-term performance and offtake risk are much more important to us than if you just develop and flip your assets for a quick exit,” Amiram said.

Blueleaf’s core markets include Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea but Amiram’s focus now is on India.

The company is in the midst of completing the 300 MW the Pachora solar-wind hybrid project in central India and will break ground on another 1 GW of purely solar projects in the country this quarter.

India’s solar potential is immense. Official data pegs it at 750 GW with total actual installed solar capacity having risen past 100 GW as of 31 January 2025. This is a 38% increase from end-2023 but still a fraction of India’s full potential.

The country also encapsulates what Amiram sees as the two key challenges for the solar market.

The first has to do with regulatory hurdles and trade barriers. India has an Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM) that government projects must procure solar modules from, essentially restricting the use of far cheaper imported modules.

“We see substantially inflated module prices in India as a result,” Amiram says. “Huge double-digit percentage above what we’d pay internationally. Projects are still viable, but the costs naturally get passed down to end-users.”

Prices of ALMM modules in India, made with imported cells, are at least 20-30% higher than imported non-ALMM modules, according to OPIS data.

This wave of trade protectionism is ongoing – India is set to expand the ALMM scheme to cover solar cells in 2026—and is certainly not limited to any single country. The U.S., for example, has been grabbing headlines this year with an onslaught of general and industry-specific tariffs.

“Unfortunately, my mindset of keeping trade open is not the agenda of the day,” Amiram says. “We are seeing disruptions of the supply chain and volumes that have been going to markets like the U.S. are going to be looking for new outlets”.

These trade barriers-induced disruptions have seen solar module prices crashed by almost 50% from August 2023 to $0.086/wp on a FOB China basis as of May 13, OPIS data showed.

This might seem like unequivocally good news for the fervent environmentalist pushing for solar adoption but Amiram, unsurprisingly, is circumspect in his prognosis: “Developers and investors certainly like low module prices, but not to an extent where manufacturers are accruing losses for a sustained period… We have to take extra care that the parties we work with are still there tomorrow”.

Another challenge Amiram has a keen eye on is the use of battery energy storage systems (BESS) in renewables projects.

Advances in energy storage, both in terms of battery technology and cost economics, have enabled solar and storage systems to supply power over a 24-hour basis. But in countries where irradiance plummets and spikes by the season, short-duration batteries are insufficient.

Solutions to solar intermittency therefore vary according to the circumstances, Amiram said. He cited the example of Blueleaf’s Pachora project where a wind-solar hybrid better fits the offtake profile than a solar-storage combination.

“A wind-solar hybrid is still more competitive than a solar and storage combination in this location. Vietnam and the Philippines also have the right conditions for a PV wind battery combo rather than PV BESS only. But in other parts of Southeast Asia where there is not much commercially viable wind resource, solar and storage will be the way forward,” Amiram said.

This lack of a silver bullet suggests that the role of batteries and storage in energy transition is more nuanced than is typically presented in mainstream media. Energy storage and battery technology are often portrayed as nascent and a key stumbling block to utility grids adopting renewables in Asia, but this applies only in cases where there already is a high level of renewable energy penetration, Amiram noted.

“At connection points where solar or other renewables are only at single-digit penetration levels, your base load plants can smooth out any intermittency issues with the right micro-grid control system,” Amiram said.

Case studies from Europe and the U.S and data from the International Energy Agency show that grids can accommodate 10-20% of variable renewable storage without major storage buildout.

Vietnam is often held up as a cautionary tale of a solar deployment boom gone awry with an ill-prepared grid struggling with congestion and instability. But it is also the only country in Southeast Asia where wind and solar account for over 25% of its installed power generation capacities.

Despite being Southeast Asia’s fifth-largest economy, Vietnam has the highest installed solar capacity in the region at almost 19 GW. No other Southeast Asian country has more than 5 GW.

“There are utilities who gold-plate and diamond-encrust their grid to ensure a target reliability level. Is it strictly necessary? I don’t think so. Is it commercially viable? It still is and we are happy to deploy solar and battery in such markets,” Amiram said.

It is the sort of pragmatism that has enabled Amiram to navigate Asia’s byzantine power markets for the better part of the past 25 years.

Opportunities abound in Asia where renewables are needed to meet fast growing energy demand, Amiram noted. But markets range from the very developed such as India, where regulations provide for grid access and commercial frameworks, to more restrictive ones in Southeast Asia where electricity markets and grid operations are still centrally managed.

Regulatory frameworks take time to change, Amiram acknowledged, but the long run is never something that fazes him; quite the contrary.

“One thing that drew me to Blueleaf is its long-term view. You solve problems for the long run and learn lessons in uncharted territory. If it is an outsized challenge with multiple arms and legs, I don’t shy away from it,” said Amiram of his approach to work. Or was he talking about his approach to endurance sports?

Reporting by Hanwei Wu, hwu@opisnet.com