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  • Energy Policy
5 August 2019

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  • Thailand
Energy Minister Sontirat Sontijirawong will revise the Power Development Plan (PDP) of 2018-2037 by raising the contribution from renewable energy.

He added that this would promote the establishment of community power plants and widen the opportunity of energy access for communities.

He will call meeting with state energy agencies in next few days to discuss the appropriate ratio of the diverse energy sources in the PDP.

He made the remark at the Bangkok Post Forum on the topic, “Roadmap to Success: Up Close with Thailand’s New Ministers”.

The ministry will also deploy the Energy Conservation Fund to support the projects, and will support the energy storage business.

  • Renewables
5 August 2019

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  • Thailand

Ciel&Terre and SCG have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop floating PV systems on hydroelectric dams in Thailand. 

Harold Meurisse, executive director of Sky & Earth Thailand, recently told the Bangkok Post that Thailand has always been a promising market. “This is a country where the solar industry is in demand for cost competitiveness without compromising the safety and quality of photovoltaic installations,” he said. “As a result, establishing a partnership with SCG has become natural, bringing together the best polymer and floating solar energy experts to seize the major opportunity of hybridization of the floating solar system and hydroelectric dams.”

Meurisse added that Ciel&Terre is eager to extend this partnership to a wider regional level.

The combination of floating photovoltaics and hydropower has several advantages. It allows floating PV installations to benefit from the infrastructure offered by hydropower plants, such as substations and transmission lines, but it also helps to slow the evaporation of water in dams, which is a common phenomenon in Thailand. Hybrid energy production also balances out during periods of declining efficiency for either technology, like when water levels are low or when the sun is absent.

Expanding segment

Thailand aims to develop its capacity for floating PV installations, particularly on dams. According to Bloomberg, the country plans to install nearly 2.7 GW of solar capacity on nine dams by 2037.

Last June, the Thai Government Electricity Authority (EGAT) issued a call for tenders to develop 55 MW of floating solar. The projects will be installed on the Sirindhorn Dam in the northeastern part of the country. The total investment will hit 1.86 billion baht (€54 million). The call for tenders will close on Aug. 20.

  • Energy Efficiency
5 August 2019

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  • Malaysia

COMPANIES across various industries and fields grabbed top honours in Malaysia’s 2019 National Energy Awards (NEA) for best practices in energy efficiency and renewable energy (RE).

The second edition of the awards received a total of 145 applications, where 77 organisations were qualified to participate in the two broad categories of energy efficiency and RE. This was higher than 105 applications submitted for 2018’s NEA.

The NEA is an initiative by the Ministry of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change (MESTECC) to recognise energy efficient and RE practices across public and private sectors, while encouraging further innovation in the field.

Its Minister Yeo Bee Yin said the NEA is a cornerstone in the joint venture between the government and the private sector for innovations in products, solutions and commercialisation towards a green economy.

“It is my aspiration to see NEA evolve to be the leading platform for sustainable energy industry players to convene, network and share best practices with one another.

“It is on this note that I would like to see more industry associations and chambers to be part of this programme,” she said during the award ceremony in Kuala Lumpur last week.

She said the response from applicants was encouraging as it showed the growing commitment by Malaysian businesses and institutions to adopt sustainable practices in their operations.

Malaysian Green Technology Corp, which operates under the purview of MESTECC, is the implementing agency for the awards as part of its mandate to develop and promote green technology as an engine for Malaysia’s socio-economic growth.

Its acting CEO Syed Ahmad Syed Mustafa said the NEA will encourage more organisations and industries to get involved in this field, while providing a platform to recognise their initiatives.

“The aim is to encourage more companies to be involved in RE and energy efficiency in order to go for more sustainability, as well as energy security.

“In energy efficiency, we want more optimisation of energy usage conservation, so that people can save cost and, at the same time, save the environment,” he told The Malaysian Reserve after the event.

Winners of the NEA in 2019 will go on to represent Malaysia in the Asean Energy Awards (AEA) scheduled in September in Thailand. The previous 19 NEA winners in 2018 represented the country in the Asean awards held in Singapore last year, 10 of which took home an award.

“(The AEA) will put us on the map where we can position ourselves as a hub that promotes the utilisation of RE, as well as the conservation of energy or energy efficiency,” Syed Ahmad said.

The first category for the 2019 NEA, namely energy efficiency, received 17 submissions for energy efficient buildings and 27 applications for energy management.

Winners in this category were Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) for its Menara TM building in Melaka; Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd’s (MAHB) Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA2) terminal; PDC Setia Urus Sdn Bhd for Menara Komtar in Pulau Pinang; Kualiti Alam Sdn Bhd for its Environmental Reservation and Innovation Centre in Negri Sembilan; and CSC Steel Holdings Bhd for energy management. The second category was for RE and a total of 33 companies and organisations submitted entries.

The winners were Cypark Resources Bhd for its floating solar project in Negri Sembilan and FGV Palm Industries Sdn Bhd for its renewable biogas project which provides electricity to the Umas community in Tawau.

Meanwhile, KUB Berjaya Energy Sdn Bhd, Gan Teng Siew Realty Sdn Bhd, Mattan Engineering Sdn Bhd, Amcorp Perting Hydro Sdn Bhd and the Menara KEN building took home merit awards during the 2019 NEA which concluded on Aug 1.

  • Renewables
5 August 2019

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  • Malaysia

THE Sustainable Energy Development Authority Malaysia (SEDA) is expected to announce the successful bidders that would be involved in biogas initiatives to generate 30MW of electricity.

Chairman Wong Kah Woh (picture) said the winning bids, which were part of the online bidding exercise which started in the fourth quarter of last year, will be named in September.

Wong said SEDA is also studying the proposals that have been submitted by the 26 bidders and the decisions will be made next month.

“Winners will be chosen from the lowest cost offered for a total 30MW installed capacity,” Wong said after the announcement of quota reservation under the net energy metering (NEM) for property developers in Putrajaya last week.

The proposals by the 26 bidders involve biogas projects within the range of 0.396MW and 4MW, as listed on SEDA’s website.

Meanwhile, property developers are now allowed to reserve NEM quota for new projects to increase the solar photovoltaic (PV) take up rate in the country.

The provision will be implemented commencing Aug 5, 2019, applicable for residential, commercial and industrial types of developments.

Companies that are eligible must be incorporated in Malaysia, while the applications must be made before Dec 31, 2020.

Proof of development order must also be submitted as a supporting document.

As at July 31, 2019, SEDA has approved up to 58.6MW under the NEM programme, including 35.1MW approved in 2019/2020.

Wong said the NEM uptake has been boosted since the enhancement of the scheme last year.

Starting this year, any excess energy will be sold to Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB) on a one-on-one basis instead of a displaced cost, which would translate into better return on investments for solar PV system.

First introduced in November 2016, the NEM scheme allows consumers to export excess energy produced by installed solar PV system to TNB.

A total capacity of 500MW has been allocated until the end of 2020.

Wong said SEDA is optimistic that the 500MW will be taken up by 2020 from current 58.6MW, accelerated by the NEM quota reservation for property developers.

The initiative is one of the measures taken by the government to achieve a target of 20% of renewable energy (RE) in the installed capacity mix (excluding large hydro) by 2025.

As of last year, RE is 6% of the national installed capacity mix.

  • Others
5 August 2019

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  • Philippines

MANILA, Philippines – A lower court stopped the Department of Energy (DOE) from requiring oil companies to unbundle fuel prices.

The decision of Mandaluyong City Regional Trial Court Branch 213 penned by Judge Carlos Valenzuela on Monday, August 5, granted Petron Corporation‘s application for a writ of preliminary injunction, preventing the DOE from compelling oil companies to detail how price adjustments are computed.

Oil companies oppose unbundling because competitors may get access to confidential information. But the DOE had said that the data companies would submit will only be for the purposes of the agency and will not be made public.

“The petitioner might be placed at risk of losing its trade secrets and incur irreparable injury by disclosing such information to DOE,” the court decision read.

In a text message, Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi said “the DOE will abide by the court.”

The DOE wants the following details from oil companies on a weekly basis:

  • International content – includes import and freight costs
  • Taxes – includes excise and value added taxes and duties
  • Take components – port charges; costs for refining, storage, handling, marketing; profit margins

The court said companies like Petron might not be able to comply with such requirements, which means they would be subject to penalties.

The Philippine Institute of Petroleum and Pilipinas Shell filed similar cases against the DOE over the matter.

The DOE wants to push through with unbundling so that the government can better crack down on reported incidents of anticompetitive behavior. – Rappler.com

  • Energy Efficiency
5 August 2019

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  • Philippines

Ponder upon this—if the Philippines found a climate-friendly way of generating and distributing 45,900 megawatts at a cost lower than those of renewables, coal-fired plants or natural gas-fed plants, shouldn’t the country grab this opportunity?

Or, this—if the country found another “Malampaya-like” field with no less than 182 million tons of oil equivalent of indigenously sourced energy through 2040, shouldn’t the country mine this and use it to avoid imported oil, coal and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions?

Most economies, whether developed or emerging, have come to realize that energy efficiency (EE) should be mainstreamed as the cheapest, fastest and most untapped energy resource in any energy mix that still uses a blend of coal, natural gas, nuclear and renewable energy (RE). Many energy markets now position EE alongside RE.

EE has been labeled by the global climate community as the “first fuel” that any economy must grant “priority dispatch” to before it optimizes traditional fossil fuels and RE sources, simply because it is the least-cost option and fastest means to increase available energy capacities and abate GHG emissions.

Last June 24, the International Energy Agency (IEA) established an independent high-level global commission to examine how progress on EE can be rapidly accelerated.

Through the last decade, IEA has become more convinced that, more than any single fuel, EE has a central role to play in meeting global sustainable energy goals. IEA analyses have shown that with the right policies, the global economy could double in size by 2040 while still maintaining broadly the same level of energy use as today. Those policies alone would enable the world to achieve more than 40 percent of the emissions cuts needed to reach international climate goals using cost-effective technologies available.

When IEA launched the global commission last month, it said that if countries implement all the economically viable EE potential available today, consumers around the world could save more than half a trillion US dollars through lower energy bills by 2040, while GHG emissions, air pollution in cities and dependence on energy imports could all be reduced. But this will require firm and rapid action from governments.

Pioneers

Interestingly, the Philippines may have been one of the pioneers in Southeast Asia to enact a law on energy conservation when it passed Batas Pambansa No. 73 on June 11, 1980.

Unfortunately, BP 73 lapsed after a limited five-year enforcement, and its successor BP 872, which granted BP 73 an additional five-year effectivity, also lapsed on June 10, 1990. While all our Asean neighbors have caught up, the Philippines remained through the succeeding three decades as the only country in Southeast Asia with neither an EE law nor a broad-reaching fiscal incentive package for EE projects and activities. Filipinos have reverted to a voluntary energy conservation market, which transformed very gradually with small pockets of EE programs for appliance standards and labeling, industrial EE, energy-efficient lighting, information campaigns and government building energy management.

What the country unknowingly hungered for was a sustained market transformation toward mainstreamed EE.

To put it simply, EE is to produce more [economic] output from less input energy, while energy conservation is merely reducing energy demand, even at the expense of reduced [economic] output.

Filipinos will have to be re-educated from the pure nice-to-have “enercon” mindset to investing in and employing EE as a must-have energy resource for our country, and that while a sibling in the clean energy transition, EE is a separate, distinct energy sector than that of RE.

After 29 years of perseveringly refiling a lapsed “enercon” measure since the 8th Congress, the Philippines finally rejoined the global movement of accelerating EE markets with the passage of the Republic Act No. 11285 or the Energy Efficiency and Conservation (EE&C) Act, on April 12, 2019. The President’s approval of the bicameral-endorsed bill of the 17th Congress has finally shifted the energy-consuming market from the inertia of the 29-year voluntary market to one of policy-driven market transformation.

Legislative journey

The three-decade legislative journey has gradually morphed the enercon law of the early 1980s into the new EE&C Act in three fundamental ways: First, EE has emerged as the more prominent market intervention than energy conservation. More income-generating sectors have come to realize that improving the EE of the economy is clearly linked with the national goals of increasing productivity and competitiveness, unlike pure energy conservation which, if overdone, may start to stifle economic growth. Second, the combined “EE and conservation” program was being positioned as a national core energy policy, instead being repeatedly used as a stop-gap remedy to fill a temporary energy supply deficit, whether caused by a global tightening of the crude oil market, or a summer-time thinning out of electricity grid reserves. This mainstreaming shift was made prominent by a stream of administrative orders during the term of former President Arroyo, when DOE started to brand EE&C as “a way of life.” Lastly, and more recently, the government has started to understand that appropriate fiscal incentives would be needed to mobilize third-party capital investments, instead of counting just building owners as developers of EE improvements.

EE is valuable to any energy consumer, largely because the resultant energy savings means more cash available for other fundamental and productive needs—food, living expenses, transportation, raw materials, labor, and other costs now being threatened by self-induced and globally-driven inflation. If all sectors are able to shave off 182 million tons of oil equivalent (Mtoe) in energy savings through EE projects, purchases and investments made between 2017-2040 to meet DOE’s 10 Mtoe/year target by 2040, then these sectors would have avoided over P36 trillion in energy purchases for electricity, fuel and other conventional sources. For the country, the Philippine Energy Efficiency Alliance (PE2) estimates that meeting DOE’s EE&C roadmap targets by 2040 means that P36 trillion in avoided energy purchase can be used to fund other economic activities or basic necessities of the Filipino people.

PE2 also believes that EE can also defer by as much as 45,900 MW of power and nonpower generation, transmission and distribution capacity upgrades through the period 2017-2040. This virtual “negawatt” power generation potential of EE is more than twice than DOE’s roadmap target of 20,000 MW installed RE capacity by 2040.

Achieving DOE’s 2040 EE&C roadmap targets is likewise expected to avoid up to 1.7 billiontons of carbon dioxide in equivalent GHG emissions through the next 21 years. Preliminary estimates now show that a little over a third of the Philippines’ initially proposed nationally determined contributions by 2030 to the Paris climate agreement can be delivered by EE alone.

Aggressive EE implementation will also help the Philippines contribute positively to Asean’s 20 percent and Apec’s 45 percent energy intensity reduction targets by 2020 and 2035, respectively. Another major reason close to the heart of this administration is that economic studies have confirmed that increased EE of the economy will generate incremental GDP output and additional jobs. More relevant to DOE’s policy aspirations, EE will most certainly slow down or decelerate the steady rise in energy prices, both for electricity and imported fossil fuels such as crude oil and coal.

New law

With a new EE&C law in place, the Philippines opens a new era of transformation. A closer and permanent collaboration between government, civil society and the private sector should be forged and strengthened through time to be able to harvest this indigenous “first fuel” as part of our energy mix and policy framework with incentivized capital flows toward this new asset class and economic activity—EE—over the long haul.

  • Renewables
5 August 2019

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  • Lao PDR

VIENTIANE, Aug. 5 (Xinhua) — Lao government officials have dismissed social media reports that the Xayaboury dam in northern Laos is slowing the flow of water to downstream sections of the Mekong River.

The dam is built on the run-of-river model, which does not require water to be stored, local daily Vientiane Times on Monday quoted Somphith Keovichith, Lao director general of the Department of Energy Business under the Ministry of Energy and Mines as saying.

Water inflow equals water outflow, which is the concept behind a run-of-river dam. Due to unseasonably low rainfall, the level of the lower Mekong and other rivers in Laos has fallen significantly, and rice farmers have been suffering the effects, Somphith said.

The low level of the Mekong has been attributed to unusually low rainfall in Luang Prabang province, some 220 km north of the capital Vientiane, Xayaboury province, some 300 km north of capital Vientiane, and in areas of the Xayaboury dam, some 350 km upstream of Vientiane capital.

From January to July of 2019, the amount of rain recorded was the lowest in the last 10 years, said Somphith.

According to an announcement issued by the company which operates the Xayaboury dam, a trial run of electricity generation was conducted from July 15 to Monday ahead of engaging in full-scale electricity production for the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat) by the end of 2019.

It has largely been assumed that water retention was needed for this test and this had a knock-on effect downstream.

The Xayaboury 1,285 MW river hydropower project, which is developed mainly by Thai companies and is to sell 95 percent of its electricity to Thailand’s electricity utility, Egat, will be one of the largest run-of-river hydropower dams on the Mekong. Construction of the dam began in 2012 after Lao government completed a consultation process with other countries through which the Mekong flows, in line with the 1995 Mekong Agreement.

The government expects to earn 3.9 billion U.S. dollars from the operation of the dam throughout the 29-year concession period, including 1.897 billion U.S. dollars in royalties and 637 million U.S. dollars in taxes.

  • Renewables
5 August 2019

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  • Indonesia

The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry says it has received a commitment from the Finance Ministry and the Environment and Forestry Ministry to maximize the use of rooftop solar panels in their buildings across Indonesia.

Sutijastoto, the ministry’s director-general for new and renewable energy, said the two ministries’ buildings, whether central or regional offices, had a total potential capacity of around 100 megawatts (MW).

“The energy minister [Ignasius Jonan] has got approval from the two ministries. In five years’ time, the two ministries’ offices will able to add 100 MW from their solar rooftop installations,” he told the press in a briefing on Friday.

 

He said that the use of the rooftop solar panels could start in 2020 on a small scale and the number would be increased in 2021. “At the earliest in 2020 they will start to install rooftop solar panels, especially the environment ministry, which will conduct its planned renovation soon,” he said.

In more detail, the Institute for Essential Service Reform (IESR), which is working together with the energy ministry in formulating a solar-rooftop roadmap, calculated that the Finance Ministry had a potential of 50 MW per rooftop solar panel.

“The Finance Ministry has a total of around 700 buildings across Indonesia, which on average could generate 78-kilowatt peak [kWp] each,” IESR executive director Fabby Tumiwa said on Friday.

Meanwhile Fabby said the environment ministry had around 200 buildings across Indonesia with average potential power capacity of 11 MW per building.(hen)

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