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Renewables

Vietnam gears up to shift to renewable energy

17 September 2019

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Vietnam

Total solar energy output in the reviewed period was equivalent to a 1,200 MW coal-powered plant, said EVN. Associate Professor Pham Ngoc Linh of the Party Central Committee’s Communications and Education Commission said Vietnam is seeking new energy sources in the wake of climate change. Within two years, renewable energy, mainly solar and wind energy, has surged sharply to make up 9% of the country’s total power generation, according to Mr. Linh.

“Renewable energy is the future of electricity. We are shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy, which will have a positive impact on people’s livelihoods and economic growth,” Mr. Linh noted.

The Vietnam Renewable Energy Week is being held in Hanoi and the Mekong Delta province of An Giang. The country aims to produce 10.7 percent of its electricity through renewable energy by 2030, mainly through solar and wind power.

Others

Promoting efficient and sustainable energy transition in Vietnam

17 September 2019

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Vietnam

NDO – Vietnam Renewable Energy Week 2019 was launched on September 17, in Hanoi, as an activity to respond to contribute to the implementation of Government policies on renewable energy development in Vietnam.

The event, running until September 20, was jointly organised by the Vietnam Sustainable Energy Alliance (VSEA), Vietnam Climate Action Alliance (VCCA) and the Working Group on Climate Change (CCWG).

This year’s event aims to be a forum for information exchange and multi-stakeholder dialogue in order to propose solutions for the process of energy transition and bring the greatest benefits for sustainable development in Vietnam.

Vietnam has made strong strides in developing renewable energy, especially newly-installed solar power capacity. It has become one of the most dynamic and attractive renewable energy markets in Southeast Asia.

However, this “rapid development” process is also posing new challenges for the synchronous development of the grid system, using land, electricity pricing mechanism, human resources, employment and financial resources.

In this context, Vietnam Renewable Energy Week 2019 (taking place from September 17-20 in Hanoi and An Giang) will focus on the energy transition in Vietnam – Opportunities, Challenges and lessons from international users.

This is an opportunity to bring the voice of stakeholders to contribute to the process of promoting efficient and sustainable energy transition in Vietnam, in particular, contributing ideas and solutions for energy development orientations in the coming time, such as the electricity plan or the policies to develop renewable energy and protect the environment.

As part of a series of events in Hanoi, a seminar with the theme “Energy transition in Vietnam” took place on September 17 to update the current status of Vietnam’s electricity system development and the trend of shifting trend to renewable energy sources in Vietnam.

In addition, delegates and experts discussed to remove obstacles and replicate successful lessons to promote the shift of renewable energy in a sustainable way in the future.

Renewables

It’s time for Vietnam’s renewable energy to pay back its developers

17 September 2019

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Vietnam

According to a new report released by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) in mid-September, Vietnam’s renewables policymakers have been rewarded for their steady management of the solar feed-in-tariff (FiT) program with impressive renewable capacity gains.

Such solar FiT program awarded a $0.09 per kilowatt tariff (kWh) to solar developers delivering new capacity by the end of June 2019.

The country has got a positive outcome because regional experts were cautious about whether the programme offered enough upside to funders focused on market risk. In the end, the doubters were proven wrong and Vietnamese consumers will benefit from an estimated 4.46 gigawatts of new clean solar capacity.

The renewable energy resource will now support Vietnam’s fast-growing economy at a time when its slow-moving pipeline of baseload coal projects faces new environmental challenges and deteriorating economics due to rapid improvements in cost-effective renewable solutions.

According to Melissa Brown, the report author and energy finance consultant at IEEFA, the government’s successful solar programme has stood out among Southeast Asia’s fast-growth power markets.

“Delivering 4.46 gigawatts of new capacity over two years is a tremendous achievement. It validates the renewable energy ambitions of the Vietnamese government.”

The next phase of Vietnam’s renewables program will now focus on wind, and the country has excellent offshore wind potential.

Brown thus noted that the challenge now is to prioritise programmes that can deliver the right kind of grid capacity for renewable solutions. “With more transmission capacity in place, new capacity auctions and incentive pricing for more flexible capacity can satisfy a bigger share of Vietnam’s power needs.”

“The flourishing solar sector and growing pipeline of wind projects show Vietnam can attract investment from high quality developers who are eager to partner with Vietnam on ambitious renewable developments,” said Brown.

New partnerships between foreign and local developers will be crucial for technically demanding offshore wind projects, she added.

The report also suggests nearshore and offshore sites have the greatest potential for the wind sector and can be built near areas where power is needed most, like Ho Chi Minh City.

It will also be important to see whether global banks and investors can collaborate to develop financing solutions that are a good fit for Vietnam’s wind power sector.

Others

Việt Nam Renewable Energy Week 2019 starts in Hà Nội

17 September 2019

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Vietnam

Vietnam Renewable Energy Week 2019 started in Hà Nội on Tuesday, covering discussions on the development of renewable energy resources, including solar and wind power.— VNS Photo Kiều Vân

HÀ NỘI – Vietnam Renewable Energy Week 2019 started in Hà Nội on Tuesday, covering discussions on the development of renewable energy resources, including solar and wind power.

Vietnam Renewable Energy Week 2019 was jointly organised by the Vietnam Sustainable Energy Alliance (VSEA), Vietnam Climate Action Alliance (VCCA) and the Working Group on Climate Change (CCWG).

The event is expected to be a forum for information exchange and multi-stakeholder dialogue in order to propose solutions for the process of energy transition and bring the greatest benefits for sustainable development in Việt Nam.

Ngụy Thi Khanh, director of Green Innovation and Development Centre (GreenID) said: “As a country with diversified and abundant renewable energy potential, Việt Nam gains many benefits if accelerating its early shift to renewable energy development.”

“Prioritising efficient use of energy and promoting the development of renewable energy will help ensure energy security, reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels, reduce pollution, mitigate climate change, protect public health, enhance faster access to energy for the poor, create opportunities to attract investment and create jobs for localities,” she said.

Đỗ Đức Quân, Vice Director General of the Electricity and Renewable Energy Authority under the Ministry of Industry and Trade said that in the context of climate change that has been negatively impacting the world, Việt Nam was also facing the problem of finding new energy sources.

“Increasing temperatures and reducing rainfall in recent years have caused many hydropower reservoirs in the central and Central Highlands regions to be near the dead-water level, which are great challenges for ensuring adequate power supply for production and daily life.”

According to the VSEA, over the last few years, the country has made strong strides in developing renewable energy, especially newly-installed solar power capacity. It has become one of the most dynamic and attractive renewable energy markets in Southeast Asia.

However, the rapid development of renewable energy was also posing new challenges for the power grid, land use, electricity-price mechanism, human resources/employment, and finance resources.

In order to overcome these challenges, it was necessary to have joint support and efforts from policymakers, the Government and communities, enterprises, and social organisations.

According to Melissa Brown, expert from IEEFA, Việt Nam was a country with abundant renewable energy potential, it should prioritise to maximise this advantage for the benefit of the socio-economy and clean living environment for people.

Việt Nam’s Government always encourages the development and effective use of renewable energy sources. Since 2017, the Government has issued a series of priority policies to develop renewable energy-production and attract domestic and foreign investment.

Lê Hải Đăng, from Việt Nam Electricity said developing rooftop solar power helps reduce transmission costs and price pressure as well as increase energy use efficiency.

He said providing favourable conditions in terms of policies and mechanisms, technical solutions have been also implemented to connect solar power to the national grid.

Việt Nam has great demand for energy, especially renewable energy, to develop its economy. Its power needs will be about 90,000MW by 2025 and 130,000MW by 2030.

Another workshop titled “Sustainable Energy Transition: opportunities and challenges for Mekong Delta Việt Nam” will be organised next Tuesday in Long Xuyên City, An Giang Province.

Vietnam Renewable Energy Week 2019 will last until next Tuesday. — VNS

Read more at http://vietnamnews.vn/society/535526/viet-nam-renewable-energy-week-2019-starts-in-ha-noi.html#KaliVYV4KQSVfC7W.99

Renewables

AC Energy eyes becoming leader in renewables in 6 years

17 September 2019

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Philippines

MANILA — AC Energy Philippines aims to have about 2,000 megawatts (MW) capacity by 2025 to become the leader in renewable energy (RE) in the country, with the groundbreaking of its RE plants seen in the next six months.

In a briefing Tuesday, AC Energy president John Eric Francia said although RE power plants are easier and faster to construct compared to the conventional power plants, they plan to start early to be able to meet the standards, “which assumes that a lot of renewables will be built starting 2023.”

“The timing is there given that renewable plants, yes it’s faster to develop relative to conventional plants, but still time is ticking away… so we have to get going with some groundbreaking on a measured basis,” he said.

“I don’t think it will be going in a step increase overnight but we want to make sure that we are building on a measured basis. Start with a few hundred megawatts, couple of hundred megawatts. Hopefully, break ground in the next six months or so and then progress from there,” he said.

Francia noted the Ayala Group’s power generation arm wants to be a major player in the industry given the rising demand for power due to the continued strong output of the domestic economy.

He also cited as a plus the improvement of cost and efficiency of RE amid improved policies of the government.

“With the government’s target of renewables reaching 35 percent of energy output by 2030, the country would need to build over 15 gigawatts (GW) of renewables in the next decade,” he said.

“We will make significant investments in this space,” he added but declined to give figures.

Relatively, the company has completed the acquisition of Phinma Energy Corp. for PHP6.3 billion.

Francia said the acquisition will help AC Energy meet its target to have 5GW of RE capacity by 2025.

He said the cost from the acquisition will be offset by gains from the power supply agreement (SPA) with Manila Electric Company (Meralco).

Phinma will be supplying Meralco 110 MW mid-merit capacity, wherein output is adjusted based on demand, for five years effective December 26, 2019.

The agreement was signed after the power generation company passed the competitive selection process (CSP).

Francia said South Luzon Thermal Energy Corp. (SLTEC), which is a joint venture among EC Energy, Phinma Energy, and Marubeni Corporation’s Axia Power Holdings Philippines Corporation, will be providing Meralco the agreed capacity.

He said the power generation deal is “a significant part of our turn-around because we are using SLTEC capacity for that.”

“It stabilizes our cash flows. Yes, we’re taking some risks but the beauty of the Phinma Energy or AC Energy now is we have a wide portfolio so we believe that we can manage that risk,” he added. (PNA)

Bioenergy

What’s the future of waste-to-energy facility in the Philippines?

17 September 2019

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Philippines

MANY INVESTORS ARE BECOMING MORE INTERESTED IN INVESTING IN WASTE-TO-ENERGY (WTE) FACILITY, AFTER THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (DOE) APPROVED THE COUNTRY’S FIRST WTE FACILITY LAST YEAR IN PALAWAN.

Several planned WTE facility projects followed such as the planned WTE facility in Cebu that is being eyed by a Chinese firm; the WTE facility at the Calahunan Engineered Sanitary Landfill in Mandurriao district, Iloilo City; as well as the P4.5-billion WTE facility planned to be constructed in Pangasinan byGreen Atom Renewable Energy Corporation.

Aside from DOE, there are other government agencies interested in pursuing the WTE initiative such as the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

“That’s our direction now, considering there’s increasing generation of waste in the country,” DENR Undersecretary Jonas Leones was quoted in a Philippine News Agency report.

The Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Center also said the WTE projects are rising opportunities for power investors as many local government units are becoming interested in WTE.

PPP Center Executive Director Ferdinand A. Pecson expects to see more WTE as PPP’s project due to the country’s indigenous sources problems and waste management issues.

“Energy is one of the pressing needs of the country, and also we have environmental problems like waste, which is also an important problem to solve. So we’re talking of a solution that addresses both the need for energy — renewable energy — and addressing sanitary, environmental (concerns). So cities have such problems, all cities, all local governments are looking for solutions to address this and already,” Pecson was quoted in a BusinessWorld report.

However, just like any energy source it comes with its own set of pros and cons.

According to environmentalists, putting up WTE facilities will only cause the Philippines financial losses and debt due to the unclear law mandate on renewable energy projects, as shown by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), as a response to Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) feasibility study for a project in Quezon City.

“The proposed incinerator will use fire grates to ensure waste combustion which will cause emissions of toxic and hazardous cancer-causing pollutants like dioxins and furans—a clear violation of the Clean Air Act and Ecological Solid Waste Management Act,” No Burn Pilipinas (NBP) was quoted.

Other environmental advocates also added that many companies are still trying to sell incinerators in the Philippines until now.

“Despite the incineration ban in the Clean Air Act, there are many companies that are coming to the Philippines, trying to sell incinerators, but they’re doing it by calling it different names, like ‘waste-to-energy,’” Silliman University professor Jorge Emmanuel, told Rappler on Wednesday, January 25.

“But when you look at the technology behind it, many of the technologies are simply the standard incinerator, with the addition of heat recovery boiler or some type of heat recovery,” he added.

Sustainability experts have different opinions regarding the matter. They perceive waste-to-energy facilities to be the lesser evil in a country where laws and provisions did not solve the urgent waste problems.

DENR Undersecretary Jonas Leones believes that this kind of technology is more environment-friendly than sanitary landfills as it leaks methane and other greenhouse gases that have negative effects on the environment and health. Whereas WTE technologies use biogas or enzymes to convert waste into energy.

Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy Senator Sherwin Gatchalian has committed to pioneer the creation of a regulatory framework on WTE technologies as he believes that it would benefit the country in terms of a more secure energy system and a way to address the issue of waste management system.

The solon sees financial availability as a problem in promoting the use of WTE technology.

“Financial viability is an issue because it is very expensive to build these facilities and the ‘tipping fee’ or garbage processing fee paid by Local Government Units (LGUs) is too low. If the tipping fee is low, the price of the output (electricity, fuel, or gas) is too high,” he said.

Oil & Gas

Urgent energy meeting called after oil price spike

16 September 2019

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Thailand

Energy Minister Sontirat Sontijirawong has called an urgent meeting of the Energy Policy Administration Committee on Tuesday to evaluate the oil situation after the global price surge.

The minister said on Monday the meeting will assess the impact of the price increase on people and measures to help them to cope with it.

Global oil prices rose rapidly after a drone attack on two Aramco oil refineries in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia, on Saturday. Yemen’s Iran-allied Houthi rebels claimed responsibility.

Thailand imports 170,000 barrels of crude oil from the Middle East kingdom a day. The minister said earlier that oil imports were were not expected to be disrupted.

The price surge means motorists will be paying more for fuel, an increase that will also affect the cost of transporting consumer goods.

Manoon Siriwan, a board member of Star Petroleum Refining Plc, said pump prices could rise up to two baht per litre in coming days as a result of the reduction in global supply caused by the attack.

Renewables

How Thailand will integrate renewables and EVs into the grid

16 September 2019

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Thailand

Thailand wants nearly a third of its energy to come from renewable resources by 2037 – almost double of what it had in 2015.

The country has aggressively ramped up production of solar and wind power, in particular. Its solar power capacity increased tenfold from 2012 to 2017, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. It plans to build the world’s largest floating solar plants by 2037.

These new sources of energy will affect the way the country’s grid infrastructure is managed, says Dr Surat Tanterdtid, Chief of Enterprise Architecture of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand – the agency responsible for electricity generation and transmission. The most urgent need for utilities in the country is to integrate renewable energy into the main grid, he says. “When we have an increase in renewable intake in the system, it will impact the stability of the system,” he told EnergyInsider.

A more flexible grid

Thailand’s grid will need to modernise its grid with digital technologies so it can deal with varying levels of supply from renewable sources. “When we have more renewable energy, the grid will become more difficult to manage, and then we will need to give them more flexibility with the digital to make it smarter,” he says.

One way will be to use artificial intelligence techniques like machine learning to monitor and predict the supply of renewable energy into the grid. “In my point of view, we should introduce this kind of technology like AI, machine learning into the grid within the next two years,” he says.

Another sector that will have a big impact on the Thai electricity grid is the rise of electric vehicles. “New demand is actually coming from the upcoming EVs that will enter the Thailand market,” Tanterdtid says. “Approximately within two or three years, I think the number of EVs will increase significantly.”

This will significantly change electricity usage patterns, and utilities will need to be able to forecast these changes with digital technologies, he adds. “We need to prepare the power grid to be more flexible to support the increasing number of electric vehicles.”

New business models

As Thailand plans to allow new business to compete with the two state-owned suppliers, utilities are looking to new sources of revenue. Tanterdtid believes that this will give rise to new business models for utilities in the future. EGAT, together with the two state utilities, are investing 600 million baht (US$19.65 million) each year to research new areas of business, he says.

One example will be as a “load aggregator”, he says, where utilities can negotiate deals on behalf of consumers to reduce peak load on the grid. Another is through virtual power plants, where a network of buildings can buy and sell solar power from each other, and sell excess solar energy back to the main grid.

A third opportunity for utilities will be to balance demand between the main grid and microgrids, he adds. As microgrids often run on solar power and may not have storage to draw from during the night, utilities could charge them to provide a reliable supply of electricity to avoid blackouts. “The power grid needs to prepare resources to balance between new demand and supply. It is an opportunity for us,” he says.

A fourth area of revenue will be through virtual peer-to-peer trading of energy using blockchain. The government is running a pilot to simulate trading between 10 buildings at EGAT’s main campus, he adds.

News Clipping

MANY INVESTORS ARE BECOMING MORE INTERESTED IN INVESTING IN WASTE-TO-ENERGY (WTE) FACILITY, AFTER THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (DOE) APPROVED THE COUNTRY’S FIRST WTE FACILITY LAST YEAR IN PALAWAN.

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