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Others

Singapore electricity tariffs to fall 3.3% in Q4

30 September 2019

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Singapore

HOUSEHOLDS and businesses can expect lower electricity bills for the next three months.

Electricity tariffs for October to December are set to fall by an average of 3.3 per cent, or 0.79 cent per per kilowatt hour (kwh), compared with the previous quarter, SP Group said on Monday.

The decline is due to the lower cost of natural gas for electricity generation compared with the previous quarter, SP Group said.

For households, the electricity tariff before the Goods and Services Tax (GST) will decrease from 24.22 cents to 23.43 cents per kwh during the three-month period.

The average monthly electricity bill for families living in four-room HDB flats still tied to the SP Group will decrease by $2.84.

Household electricity tariffs for July to September this year – 24.22 cents per kwh – was the highest in nearly five years, since the period from October to December 2014, when it was 25.28 cents before GST.

SP Group reviews tariffs quarterly, based on guidelines set by the Energy Market Authority, which approved the new pricing.

Others

Is blockchain an overhyped tool for Asia’s energy transition?

30 September 2019

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Singapore

Branded as a revolution when it was launched in the early 1990s, the Apple Newton MessagePad personal digital assistant turned out to be a disappointment, but helped pave the way for the hugely successful iPhone and iPad.

And while smart eyewear could today be said to be overhyped, the technology could prove itself in future.

The same thing could be said about blockchain and its use in the transition of the energy sector from fossil fuels to renewables, a topic that was heatedly debated by industry experts at an event in Singapore in September.

Widely heard of but little understood, blockchain has been hailed by its advocates as a gamechanger for society and the economy, but dismissed as largely unnecessary by sceptics.

Blockchains are special data management systems that record and store information securely using virtual technology called cryptography.

A blockchain is a growing file of data entries that are stored on the computers of participating players instead of a central server. New entries or transactions are added by consensus in an automated approval process among the computers, blockchain governance expert Viktor Peter explained in Blockchain Meets Energy, a report published in June by the German-Mexican Energy Partnership and Florence School of Regulation.

What blockchain won’t do

Arguing that the technology is overhyped at Blockchain: The Next Frontier for Green Energy, an event organised by Eco-Business and The Reneum Institute earlier this month, were Martin Lim, chief executive of e-commerce platform for electricity Electrify.Asia, start-up accelerator Engie Factory Asia-Pacific managing director Quentin Vaquette and digital innovation company Build Blocks Group founder Joeri van Geelen.

Speakers entertained and informed during the debate. (From left) Joeri van Geelen, Martin Lim, Quentin Vaquette, moderator Augustine Anthuvan, Vincent Bakker, Yuree Hong and Dorjee Sun. Image: Eco-Business

Cloud systems and databases may be sufficient for the needs of utility companies and other energy players, said Lim.

“If we focus entirely on the outcomes, then we may realise that (it’s) not 100 per cent of the time we need blockchain,” he said. “Blockchain’s a technology… we can’t just invent a use for it just because it’s there.”

While highly useful for tracking and registering transactions, blockchain “really sucks when it comes to things that have to do with physical hardware”, said Lim.

Blockchain will not fundamentally resolve barriers to the energy transition from fossil-based to zero-carbon, argued Vaquette. The transition entails having more renewables in the grid, which will require a physical transformation, such as more batteries to store the energy generated.

A lot of engagement with local communities is also needed to get renewable energy projects started, said Vaquette, who has worked on such projects in Mindoro in the Philippines. “Trying to convince someone to replace a polluting 25-year-old power plant on their island with something they don’t know (about), you say it’s cheaper but they don’t believe you—whether you have blockchain here or not is not going to solve the problem,” he told about 100 attendees from sectors such as energy, property and telecommunication.

While blockchain can facilitate peer-to-peer transactions, it will take a considerable amount of time before the energy industry enables data transfer and monetary transactions through public blockchains and involves a significant number of its stakeholders, said van Geelen, whose side emerged victorious in an audience vote.

Legitimate and ‘inevitable’ for the energy transition

Arguing against the motion were Dorjee Sun, co-founder of blockchain company Perlin, Vincent Bakker, co-founder of tech start-up Positive Energy and Yuree Hong, founder of deep tech research and consulting firm Ampliv.io.

Blockchain is already used in places such as South Africa, New York, Bangkok, Australia and Singapore, and global revenue from the technology could exceed US$23 billion in 2023, Hong noted.

Last year, Australian blockchain company Power Ledger and Thai renewable energy firm BCPG launched Asia’s first peer-to-peer energy sharing programme in Bangkok.

BCPG installed connections, meters and solar panels in a neighbourhood and Power Ledger connected its blockchain to the meters, which enabled peer-to-peer energy trading and invoicing. The trial involved a shopping centre, a school, an apartment building and a dental hospital. Participants were able to make money from the excess renewable energy generated.

Last October, Singapore energy company SP Group launched a blockchain-powered renewable energy certificate (REC) marketplace, allowing local and international organisations to trade in RECs.

Blockchain could even help tackle haze in the region caused by forest and plantation fires in Indonesia, if land rights and titles are entered into an immutable, uncorruptible database, said Sun.

The uses of blockchain are extensive and legitimate, even if it does not directly make the energy sector greener, argued Bakker. “Fertiliser is not going to feed me; it’s disgusting. But I cannot say it’s a hyped up tool (in food production because) it’s essential to feed seven billion people. And so, blockchain will be inevitable for the energy transition,” he said.

Low-hanging fruit

In his keynote address before the debate, Reneum’s chief executive Assaad Razzouk said a key frustration is the under-investment in renewable energy needed to limit global warming to no more than 2°C by 2100.

Blockchain can ensure proper tracing of the environmental attributes of renewables, said The Reneum Institute’s Assaad Razzouk. Image: Eco-Business

“With some colleagues, I started to think about how blockchain can accelerate investments into green infrastructure and renewable energy worldwide. The answer is not easy because capital is generally resistant to change,” said Razzouk, who is also group CEO of Sindicatum Renewable Resources.

A low-hanging fruit is the digitisation of the environmental attributes of renewable energy, he said.

The not-for-profit Reneum operates a digital platform that leverages blockchain to facilitate environmental attribute certification, the issuance of tokens and transactions. Tokens are issued for clean energy generated and can be bought by corporations seeking to meet sustainability targets.

Asked about blockchain’s high energy consumption—largely due to Bitcoin mining, which involves intensive computations to prove blocks of transactions—Razzouk said it is not a problem if powered by clean sources, and pointed to findings that Bitcoin mining is more than 74 per cent powered by renewables.

Environmental attribute certification has the potential to boost investments in renewable energy by stimulating investment in unregulated or underserved markets, mitigating investment risk in less mature regions, and increasing financing of new projects, he said. “Today, only 16 per cent of renewable energy can be properly traced… Imagine if you digitise all your energy globally.”

Renewables

World Bank supports Indonesia’s geothermal energy development

30 September 2019

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Indonesia

Jakarta (VNA) – The World Bank (WB) has approved a 150 million USD loan for Indonesia to scale up investments in geothermal energy by reducing the risks of early-stage exploration.

The loan is accompanied by 127.5 million USD in grants from the Green Climate Fund and the Clean Technology Fund, two institutions supporting climate-friendly development.

Geothermal energy is expected to play a significant role in reducing Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions. As a clean and renewable energy source that provides power continuously, geothermal can reduce the country’s dependence on coal-fired power and other fossil fuels.

If geothermal resources can be accessed easily, costs are competitive with coal and natural gas.

Indonesian Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani said the country’s geothermal sector has vast potential and its current installed geothermal power capacity is already the second largest in the world.

Geothermal is environmentally sustainable and developing this sector is an integral part of Indonesia’s overall energy security, as well as making the country less dependent on imported fuels, she added.

Therefore, the government of Indonesia is strongly committed to encourage participation by developers in exploring the geothermal potential and to provide support through this risk mitigation facility, Mulyani said.

Under the Indonesia Geothermal Resource Risk Mitigation (GREM) project, the financing from the WB will help public and private sector developers to mitigate risks in exploration of geothermal resources, including covering a part of the cost in case of unsuccessful exploration.

The project will also finance technical assistance and capacity building of key stakeholders in the geothermal sector.

FX Sutijastoto, Director General of New, Renewable Energy, and Energy Conservation under Indonesia’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, said achieving the target of 23 percent renewable energy mix by 2025 requires contributions from geothermal development of about 7 percent, or equal to 7,000 MW. It is an ambitious and huge development with a total investment of 35 billion USD.

Geothermal projects are risky investments especially at the exploration stage, and no financial institutions provide funding for this early stage.

World Bank Country Director for Indonesia and Timor-Leste Rodrigo A. Chaves said financing for exploration drilling has been among the main barriers for geothermal expansion in Indonesia. Overcoming this hurdle will allow Indonesia to fully tap into the country’s large geothermal potential./.

Coal

‘Coal is still king’ in Southeast Asia even as countries work toward cleaner energy

30 September 2019

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ASEAN

Coal is still a dominant fuel in the rapidly growing economies of Southeast Asia, even amid a general global move toward cleaner energy sources, data from several recent reports show.

“The narrative surrounding coal has been pessimistic across the world. This will result in the gradual slowdown of new coal-fired capacity in Southeast Asia,” said Jacqueline Tao, research associate at Wood Mackenzie, a commodity consultancy.

“However, the reality of rising power demand and affordability issues in the region mean that we will only start to see coal’s declining power post-2030,” Tao said on Sept. 25 when the consultancy released a new report.

“Coal is still king in Southeast Asia’s power market,” according to Wood Mackenzie.

The coal industry has been facing widespread criticism from environmental campaigners for causing pollution.

But global coal demand grew for a second straight year to reach 0.7% in 2018, data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) showed.

In its report published in December, the IEA projected coal use through 2023 to be stable as strong consumption growth in Southeast Asia and India offsets declining usage in Europe and North America.

“Coal demand grows across much of Asia due to its affordability and availability,” the IEA in that report.

Not only will coal continue to be the dominant fuel source in power generation in Southeast Asia, its use will grow and peak in 2027 before slowing, the Wood Mackenzie study found. By 2040, coal will account for 36% of Southeast Asia’s energy mix for power generation, according to the consultancy.

The demand surge is primarily driven by Indonesia and Vietnam, accounting for almost 60% of Southeast Asian power demand by 2040, said Tao.

However, as more banks shun the financing of coal projects amid government commitments to turn to cleaner energy sources, renewable energy is expected become more pervasive.

Wood Mackenzie estimates that solar and wind power plants will lead in Southeast Asia’s power capacity mix at 35% in 2040. The investment in wind and solar power will make up 23% of total power investment, amounting to more than $89 billion from 2019 to 2040.

Problems with renewable energy in Southeast Asia

The expected growth in renewable energy will come even though such energy is “less cost competitive in the region compared to the rest of the world, and (faces) challenges such as land acquisition and intermittency issues,” Tao added.

Intermittency issues refer to the availability of renewable power on days when there isn’t enough resources such as sunlight or wind to power such plants. While the power plants could use batteries to store backup energy, there are still technological and cost challenges when implementing such plans.

Indeed, clean energy targets in Indonesia — Southeast Asia’s largest economy — will be “tough to reach,” Moody’s Investors Service said in an early September report.

The Indonesian government has targeted generating 23% of electricity from renewable sources by 2025 — almost double the 12% now, but it will be “difficult to achieve because capacity expansion plans are still dominated by coal,” Moody’s analysts wrote in the report.

“The key challenge is the evolving policy and regulatory framework, which has seen multiple changes over the years,” they added.

Coal-generated power also receives subsidies from the government, which makes its price more attractive than electricity generated from wind and solar energy, they noted. Other issues include tariffs for renewable energy projects.

Indonesia is also a sprawling archipelago with no strong electricity grids on many islands which makes it difficult for the country to host large project sites that could benefit from the economies of scale, the Moody’s analysts added.

China and Japan are big investors in coal power

Globally, major coal user China is set to see the country’s use fall 3% by 2023, the IEA noted in its December report.

But even as China seeks to cut politically sensitive air pollution at home, the country has been investing massively in coal projects outside its shores, notably in places linked to the Belt and Road Initiative.

East Asian economic powerhouses Japan and South Korea are also pumping money into the fossil fuel.

Japan had planned new coal-fired plants on its shores as the country cut back on its reliance on nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster in 2011. But there has been social and political backlash against new coal-fired plants.

Several Japanese utilities firms have cancelled plans for new coal-fired power plants, Reuters reported in April.

While producers of the fossil fuel have been championing “clean coal” technology that reduces pollutant emissions into the atmosphere, non-governmental environmental organization Greenpeace says such methods still produce pollution that is simply disposed elsewhere in the environment.

Oil & Gas

Vietnam’s PV Drilling leases oil rig to Brunei Shell

30 September 2019

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Vietnam

HANOI: PetroVietnam Drilling & Well Services Corp, or PV Drilling, said on Monday it had won a contract to lease an oil rig to Brunei Shell Petroleum Company Sdn Bhd (BSP) for drilling in Brunei.

Under the contract, PV Drilling will lease the semi-submersible self-erecting tender assist drilling rig, PV Drilling V, to BSP for six years from April 2021, it said in a statement.

It did not give the value of the contract nor the location of the drilling field in Brunei.

Others

Thailand welcomes Chevron’s resumption of talks to resolve energy dispute

29 September 2019

–

Thailand

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thailand’s energy minister on Sunday welcomed a decision by U.S. energy company Chevron to continue negotiations rather than seek arbitration to resolve a dispute over who should pay for removing offshore oil and

Thailand wants Chevron to pay the full decommissioning costs, estimated by a local newspaper at around $2.5 billion, for infrastructure at the Erawan gas field, which it is due to hand over to Thai state oil firm PTT Exploration and Production Pcl in April 2022 when its concessions expire.

Reuters first reported last week that the U.S. company had “temporarily suspended” a plan to seek arbitration in order to allow more time for talks with Thailand’s energy ministry, but that arbitration was still a possibility “within weeks” if talks do not succeed.

Thailand’s energy minister Sontirat Sontijirawong said on Sunday the Chevron’s decision was a good sign that the two parties could work together to resolve the dispute and ensure a smooth handover of the gas field.

“Chevron’s decision to hold off the arbitration process to continue negotiations is welcomed,” energy minister Sontirat Sontijirawong said.

“I also believe that we will arrive at the best agreements while prioritizing Thailand’s interests,” he added.

The dispute arose in 2016 when Thailand retroactively enforced a new energy ministry regulation requiring gas field operators to pay the costs of decommissioning all assets they have installed even if they no longer operate them.

Chevron argues that under the terms of its initial contracts from 1971 it is only liable for infrastructure that is no longer deemed usable before it hands over the field to another operator.

The new law would require Chevron to pay the future costs of decommissioning all the infrastructure it has installed at the Erawan field, including still usable assets it will transfer to PTTEP free of charge.

The dispute has implications for other international energy companies such as France’s Total and Japan’s Mitsui & Co, which also have stakes in offshore energy concessions in the Gulf of Thailand.

Outside of the oil and gas industry, other foreign investors in Thailand were also concerned about the retroactive use of laws, and what precedent the case might set for the sanctity of their contracts.

gas platforms.

Others

Malaysia will not pay to return illegally imported waste, says Yeo

28 September 2019

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Malaysia

GEORGE TOWN (Bernama): The federal government will not spend a single sen to send illegal waste-filled containers back to the countries of origin, says Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change Minister Yeo Bee Yin (pic).

She said the ministry has been working closely with the Penang government and has contacted the respective embassies to return the waste to the companies and countries in charge.

“It’s not just about the cost; it’s about dignity. Why do they send things to us and we still need to pay them to send it back?

“The senders responsible for it should pay the fine for importing illegal waste until they have collected back their waste,” she told reporters after officiating the eighth edition of the Penang International Green Conference and Exhibition (PGIGCE) 2019 together with Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow here Saturday (Sept 28).

She said representatives from the United Kingdom arrived in Penang a few days ago to identify the owners of 42 out of 265 40-foot containers filled with plastic waste found abandoned at the North Butterworth Container Terminal (NBCT) since January this year.

“Identifying the senders is not an issue, but the procedure itself would take some time,” she said.

On another subject, Yeo said the federal government would provide any necessary support for the Penang government in mitigating rising sea levels due to climate change.

She said the state government already has plans for making Penang a climate-resilient state.

“As the federal government, we fully support whatever planning that comes with climate resilience or carbon reduction, one way or another,” she said.

Earlier, in her opening speech, Yeo announced that the federal government has provided incentives to Penang to catalyse the use of renewable energy in Malaysia and attract more students pursuing Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education.

The incentives include rolling out four sets of solar panels installed in three schools in the state and one entity of choice by the Seberang Perai City Council (MBSP), as well as an allocation of RM500,000 to Tech Dome Penang to offer free admission to students.

With the theme “Penang Green and Smart City”, the three-day event featured 70 exhibition booths, making it the largest PGIGCE yet. – Bernama
Read more at https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2019/09/28/malaysia-will-not-pay-to-return-illegally-imported-waste-says-yeo#JbeMjArELVSS8dd4.99

Others

Vietnam to promote use of LNG in power industry

28 September 2019

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Vietnam

HÀ NỘI (Vietnam News/ANN) -The Vietnamese Government and Ministry of Industry and Trade planned to create favourable conditions for Japanese enterprises to research, survey and deploy liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects in Vietnam as it attempted to develop its use in the power production industry.

The statement was issued by Minister Trần Tuấn Anh during a meeting with Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Isshu Sugawara in Tokyo on Thursday.

Anh asked Japan to continue supporting Vietnam to promote the development of gas, thermal and power projects, with the necessary regulations and policies to expand LNG ports and train staff in the field.

Sugawara said Japan would increase its budget to support training human resources for Vietnam in the near future.

Regarding international economic integration, the two ministers emphasised the need to promote multilateral trade negotiations in the region such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

Sugawara said he highly appreciated Vietnam’s development in recent years and believed the RCEP agreement would be completed on time.

The meeting was held after Anh attended the LNG Producer-Consumers Conference 2019 in Tokyo on Thursday, which attracted policymakers, researchers and representatives from 14 LNG production countries and 12 LNG consumption countries.

At the conference, Anh said the development of LNG was an indispensable trend to diversify fuel sources, contributing to the country’s energy security.

Vietnam’s energy exploitation is mainly based on traditional resources such as hydroelectricity, coal, oil and gas, and hydroelectricity has almost been fully exploited. The Vietnamese Government has established policies to increase the use of renewable energy for economic development.

In the development plan for Vietnam’s gas industry, the demand for LNG will increase to about five million tonnes by 2025, about 10 million tonnes by 2030 and 15 million tonnes by 2035.

“To accomplish this goal, Vietnam has developed LNG import warehouses and ports. It has also built and issued a legal framework for the development of Vietnam’s LNG industry, and set up priority projects based on LNG demand and investment promotion,” Anh said.

The conference, a global annual dialogue launched in 2012, provides participants with a venue to share the latest trends in the global LNG market and discuss opportunities and challenges. — VNS

News Clipping

What blockchain won’t do

Legitimate and ‘inevitable’ for the energy transition

Low-hanging fruit

Problems with renewable energy in Southeast Asia

China and Japan are big investors in coal power

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