A 420 MW solar power project, the largest of its kind in Southeast Asia, has officially started production in Tay Ninh.
The inauguration of the Dau Tieng Solar Power Complex, a joint venture between Vietnamese construction firm Xuan Cau and Thai conglomerate B.Grimm, took place Saturday in Tan Chau District, Tay Ninh Province, around 100 km (62 miles) from Ho Chi Minh City.
The $391 million complex covers 540 hectares within the semi-submerged land at Dau Tieng Lake, the largest manmade lake in the country.
Construction on the complex started in June last year and was completed in about 10 months.
The plant is expected to provide about 688 million kWh of electricity annually, equivalent to the consumption of nearly 320,000 households. It is estimated that electricity generated by the farm can meet the power demand of Tay Ninh and supply additional power to the southern region.
Nguyen Van Binh, head of the Central Economic Commission, said at the inauguration ceremony that the plant would help turn Tay Ninh into one of the country’s “capitals” of solar power.
“It will contribute to the valuable resources of green and clean energy, while helping ensure national energy security and boosting local socio-economic development,” he said.
Tay Ninh is reportedly a province with great potential for renewable energy. It already has 10 solar power projects, six of them in the semi-flooded area of Dau Tieng Lake.
The 10 projects are estimated to generate a total capacity of 808 MW. Nine of them have begun operations, producing 668 MW of electiricty.
Vietnam has great potential for renewable energy with 2,700 hours of sunshine a year, according to the Institute of Strategy and Policy on Natural Resources and Environment. The government has issued several policies to attract investment into renewable energy towards reducing the country’s dependence on thermal power.
Solar power currently accounts for 0.01 percent of the country’s total power output, but the government plans to increase the ratio to 3.3 percent by 2030 and 20 percent by 2050.
Vietnam now depends largely on hydropower and thermal power plants for its electricity demands, but the projects have often drawn criticism from both local and international communities for their adverse environmental impacts.
The country aims to produce 10.7 percent of its electricity through renewable energy by 2030, mainly through solar and wind energy.
TAGUIG CITY, Sept. 9 — Fresh from his recent participation at the 37th ASEAN Ministers on Energy Meeting (AMEM37) in Bangkok, Thailand, Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Alfonso G. Cusi called for the further strengthening of energy relations among ASEAN member-countries, as he led the energy family in this morning’s flag raising ceremony at the agency’s headquarters.
“Last week, we had the chance to engage our ASEAN counterparts in comprehensive dialogues on a myriad of energy issues, which included, among others, innovations in renewable energy, climate change mitigation, and microgrid utilization. Shared borders mean shared responsibilities. It also means we face common challenges in the midst of pursuing our collective vision for the region. Now more than ever, it is vital for the ASEAN to work together,” the Energy Chief stressed as he shared the highlights of AMEM37.
Secretary Cusi further emphasized the importance of undertaking joint exploration activities with fellow ASEAN member-countries to help the Philippines attain energy security through energy resource exploration and development.
AMEM is held annually as part of the ASEAN’s Ministerial Conferences. (DOE)
Maybe something has been lost in translation but the announcement by the Philippines government’s official news agency of the deal signed to secure the city of Bacolod’s first large scale solar farm would appear to indicate the Korean company involved was a somewhat wary partner.
Filipino company Amatera Renewable Energy Corp has signed an agreement with Korea’s TPC Construction Corp to develop a 50 MW facility at Barangay Vista Alegra, according to a report published by the state-owned Philippines News Agency on Saturday.
Good news then, with Bacolod ready to embrace the PHP2 billion ($38.6 million) development on a 74-hectare farm belonging to the family that owns Amatera.
At this point, both parties officially make positive noises about the deal for inclusion in the accompanying press release – or at least their PR departments do.
Over to TPC Construction president Charles Ji, who attended a ceremony in L’ Fisher Chalet on Friday to mark the agreement. “As a Korean, it was very difficult to do business in the Philippines,” Ji reportedly told the gathering before talking of his pride in signing the deal and adding the project would be “based on Korea’s superior technology”. And to round things off in a suitable manner, Ji added: “We will prepare thoroughly to ensure that construction and operation will not be disrupted.”
The news wire reported TPC will now seek investors for the project with the aim of getting it operational within a year.
Amatera chief finance officer Ramon Luis Lacson struck a more conventional tone at the ceremony, saying: “From the bottom of our hearts, Charles, thank you for trusting our family and we also extend our trust in you. We hope that this renewable energy project will deliver power to our city, which is a clean and more progressive type of energy that will be appreciated by our children and our children’s children.”
The Bacolod project was added to a list of approved facilities by the Philippines Department of Energy in June 2016.
Fuel Pipeline Transportation (FPT) plans to conduct a feasibility study to extend an oil pipeline to Myanmar to capture dynamic oil demand.
FPT is a subsidiary of SET-listed Bangkok Aviation Fuel Services.
FPT chairman MR Supadis Diskul said the company has set up a study team in August to determine project viability.
The oil pipeline will be extended from an existing pipeline running from Ayutthaya to Lamphun.
The extension, if executed, will link Tak province in Thailand and Mawlamyine district in Myanmar.
“FPT sees long-term potential in Myanmar as a new market with petrol car users, while Thailand gradually adopts electric vehicles in the next couple of years, which will trim oil demand,” MR Supadis said. “In the past two years, EVs have had limited demand from Thai motorists, but EV prices have become very competitive, narrowing the price gap with petrol or diesel cars.”
He said FPT is confident that oil demand in neighbouring countries will rise in the future, so oil transport via pipeline will become more competitive and crucial than truck shipments.
Relevant regulations should facilitate oil exports through pipelines, MR Supadis said, noting that the Petroleum Act of 2017 has yet to be amended.
“We plan to discuss the downstream petroleum sector with the Energy Business Department to revise the act to allow private operators to export oil through the pipeline system,” he said. “FPT expects there to be dialogue among national officials from Indochina at the recent Asean Ministers on Energy Meeting about pipelines connecting Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.”
FPT’s long-term business outlook sees the expansion of oil pipelines to China through Laos once regulations and authorities give way.
FPT has started the first phase of pipeline operations from Ayutthaya to Phichit across 209km. The oil depot has been operating since late March.
The second phase extends the pipeline by 367km and includes oil depots from Phichit to Lampang and is over 80% complete, scheduled to start operations in early 2020.
Total investment is 9.7 billion baht, with a pipeline length of 576km between Ayutthaya and Lampang and a capacity of 9 billion litres a year.
The extension will head west from Phichit to Tak and into Myanmar, then move south to the seaport in the Gulf of Martaban.
FPT expects the two phases of oil pipelines to break even within 10 years.
A major hydropower plant built in Laos has started commercial operation.
With two power stations, the Nam Ngiep 1 plant generates about 1.6 billion kilowatt-hours of energy per year, Japanese utility Kansai Electric Power Co said on Friday.
Nam Ngiep 1 Power Co, the operator of the plant, will supply electricity from the main station to Thailand, while the other will provide power to the domestic market, both for 27 years, the statement said.
The plant is located about 150 kilometres northeast of the country’s capital, Vientiane. It has two dams on Nam Ngiep River, a tributary of the Mekong River, which flows through the border of Laos and Thailand.
Nam Ngiep 1 Power Co, a joint venture established in 2013, is owned 45% by a Kansai Electric subsidiary, 30% by EGAT International, a subsidiary of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, and 25% by Lao Holding State Enterprise, the Lao government’s wholly-owned investment vehicle, according to the Japanese utility.
The construction of the hydropower plant began in October 2014 with financing from Japan Bank for International Cooperation, the Asian Development Bank as well as seven other Japanese and Thai lenders.
Including the Lao facility, Kansai Electric operates 11 power generation plants in nine economies, mainly in Asia, and five projects in the pipeline, Kansai Electric said.
Sugio’s orchard is his life’s work and a great source of pride for the 79-year-old resident of Tengin Baru village in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan. The orchard sits back from the main road, which in places is no more than a potholed track that cuts through jungles and villages. The plot of land is tranquil and filled with birdsong.
For 42 years Sugio has cultivated his hectare, diligently planting a variety of colourful fruits and vegetables. He points out corn, durian, rambutan, pepper and sweet potato plots; ducks and chickens wander around in the afternoon sun. “We have everything we need here,” he says. “Our family can’t even eat everything before it spoils, so we sell it at the market. Our life is already perfect.”
But he worries it might not be perfect much longer. The future of Sugio’s farm is under threat because it sits on land that has been earmarked for the site of Indonesia’s new capital, which is set to be moved from Jakarta to the sparsely-populated regencies of Kutai Kartanegara and Penajam Paser Utara on the island of Borneo.
Sugio in his beloved orchard, which sits on land designated for the new capital. Photograph: Aisyah Llewellyn/The Guardian
Indonesia’s president, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, formally announced the planned move on 16 August during his state of the union speech one day before Indonesia’s 74th anniversary of independence. Explaining the rationale, Jokowi said that, “A capital city is not just a symbol of national identity, but also a representation of the progress of the nation. This is for the realisation of economic equality and justice.”
The move comes amid dire predictions for the future of Jakarta – home to 30 million people – which is sinking due to unregulated groundwater extraction and prone to widespread flooding and congestion.
The logic of the plan, first mooted nearly 70 years ago, is also to escape Java’s earthquake risk and copy the good management of Seoul, the greenness of Singapore and Washington’s separation of administration from business.
If parliament approves the project, approximately 1.5 million people will move to the new capital in East Kalimantan at an estimated cost of 466 trillion rupiah ($32.7bn). A new government framework is expected to be set up on site by 2024 when the president finishes his second and final term in office. Jakarta will continue to be a commercial and financial centre, and the majority of its nearly 10 million residents are likely to stay.
But the proposed move is already causing concern amongst local residents in East Kalimantan including Sugio’s niece, Wiwit. “I saw the announcement about the new capital on TV and I was so shocked,” she said. “What will become of people like us? If they bulldoze our homes to build a new capital, where will we go?”
Sugio and his family were resettled in East Kalimantan as part of former president Suharto’s transmigration program in the 1970s. In an effort to encourage residents to move from densely populated areas to less crowded parts of the country, families were relocated from Java to other locations across the archipelago including Kalimantan. Sugio made the move from Banyuwangi in East Java in 1977. The government gave each family of parcel of land measuring one hectare and Wiwit points out the absurdity of the government now taking back this land to make room for the new capital. “This is our home,” she said. “This is my birthplace. We have brought up our children and grandchildren here. We don’t want to leave and we will fight if we have to.”
Asked if there were any possible positive aspects to the proposed relocation of the capital, Wiwit, who owns a small stall selling mixed rice dishes, said that she will open a larger restaurant to help feed the new government workers who will move to East Kalimantan from Jakarta.
Other residents also have concerns about the move. Jubaen, 53, is the cultural chief of Pemaluan, a village inside the planned capital zone, and a member of the indigenous Paser Balik tribe. “In town people will kill their best friends, but here we have a strong sense of community. If we have to move, all of that will be lost,” he said.
Jubaen, cultural chief of Pemaluan, a village in the development zone, fears the loss of community feeling. Photograph: Aisyah Llewellyn/The Guardian
Jubaen says he witnessed the destruction of surrounding areas by logging and mining companies firsthand over the years, and fear that the new capital will make things even worse. “When I was younger we could go into the nearby forest and collect honey and fruit, but then the area was taken over by ITCI,” said Jubaen.
ITCI, or the International Timber Corporation, is a logging company owned by Hashim Djojohadikusumo, the brother of former presidential hopeful Prabowo Subianto who was defeated by Jokowi in the election in April 2019. Much of the land in the new capital zone is owned by coal mines, palm oil plantations and logging companies. These companies are expected to profit by selling their land back to the government to make way for the new capital.
Experts have warned that the new capital is an environmental crisis waiting to happen. Bernaulus Saragih, a lecturer in the forestry department at Mulawarman University in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, tells the Guardian the effect on the environment will be massive. “There will be changes in the water systems and environmental drainage, as well as forest encroachment.”
He said forests in the region are home to endangered orangutans that and Balikpapan Bay, which will become the local port, is a habitat for endangered dugong.
Current resident Wiwit was shocked at the announcement, but says that one positive aspect is the possibility of expanding her business. Photograph: Aisyah Llewellyn/The Guardian
The government has pledged there will be no building in protected forest and says it plans to reforest abandoned mines and illegal palm oil plantations.
This week planning minister Brodjonegoro floated the idea of an orangutan conservation centre similar to one for giant pandas in the Chinese city of Chengdu. The Guardian contacted the Indonesian government for comment, but did not get a response.
Conservationists remain unconvinced that there would be no spillover effects from moving the capital.
Like many other residents, Yustinus Sapto, a local environmental researcher and activist based in Samarinda, is critical of the proposed move, pointing out that the region needs to fix its environmental problems caused by mining and logging companies first.
“Most of East Kalimantan’s orangutans are in rehabilitation centres now,” he says. “They are meant to live in the forest canopy, but due to logging and other environmental damage, the trees are now further apart and they can’t swing from one to another.”
As a result, the orangutans have to descend to the forest floor leaving them vulnerable to predators and where they grow weak from lack of exercise, he says. In recent years this has caused problems for rehabilitation centres that aim to release injured animals back into the wild once they have been rehabilitated, but increasingly struggle to find safe places to do so.
“We need to preserve and restore the ecosystem in East Kalimantan,” he says. “If you ask an environmental expert how to do that, their answer will be that it’s easy. Just rip up all the buildings and let it return to nature – the opposite of building a new capital.”
“In East Kalimantan we’re not scared of things like terrorism, “ he adds. “We’re scared of cement.”
ALOR STAR: Kedah Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Mukhriz Mahathir today officially launched the 50 mega-watt Alternating Current (MWAC) Kuala Ketil Photovoltaic Solar Farm in Kuala Ketil.
In operation since February this year and built by Edra Solar Sdn Bhd using local workers and expertise, the facility is the nation’s sixth large-scale solar farm.
“Kedah receives a lot of sunlight and we should utilise this bountiful energy for our development.
“Kedah welcomes green investments such as this, because it will ensure that our environment is protected as we develop the state using renewable energy,” Mukhriz said.
He added that Kedah has the potential to be the greenest state in Malaysia in terms of using environmentally-friendly practices in its development.
One of the highlights of the project is a 30-metre buffer zone surrounding the facility, which will be planted primarily with pineapples – an initiative which will benefit more than 2,600 farmers and the people of Kuala Ketil.
BANGKOK, THAILAND – Critics of the 1,285-megawatt Xayaburi hydropower dam in northern Laos fear recent upgrades to the controversial project won’t be enough to save the Mekong River from a critical tipping point when it starts churning out electricity at full throttle next month.
After seven years of construction, it will be the first of 11 dams planned for the river south of China — which has built 11 dams across the Mekong already — to go online.
Some 50 million people downstream rely for a living on the river’s waters, along with the fish and sediment it washes their way. Researchers and environmental advocates say the dam could block both.
Hydropower Dam on the Mekong River in Xayaburi Province, Laos
“With this year’s drought and the contribution to lower river levels from the cumulative effects of upstream dams holding back water, I think that the so-called ecological tipping point of the Mekong might have already arrived; if not, it’s certainly fast approaching,” Brian Eyler, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Center who heads the research group’s Mekong Policy Project, told VOA.
“That means that the cumulative effects of these dams are creating processes that ultimately reduce the mightiness of the Mekong to a river that is harnessed and entirely managed, and therefore the natural properties of what the Mekong provides are stunted or potentially erased,” he said.
Mekong River Project, Xayaburi Dam
The river runs more than 4,000 kilometers from China’s Tibetan plateau through Myanmar,Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam to the South China Sea.
In June, the Mekong River Commission, a multinational body monitoring the river, reported one of the lowest water levels on record. At the same time, in the middle of the region’s rainy season, Thailand’s northeast suffered its worst drought in a decade..
The Xayaburi’s Thai operator, CK Power, denied concerns from community groups and the Thai government itself that tests it was running on the dam at the time were holding back water. The project’s critics concede that low rainfall contributed to the drought but insist the dam played an important part.
“The evidence is there,” said Pianporn Deetes, Thailand campaign director for International Rivers, which advocates for sustainable river management.
“The level of the Mekong cannot be dropped by one or two meters within a day like that in natural conditions,” she said.
To assuage critics’ fears, the Lao government and the dam’s developer, Xayaburi Power, redesigned parts of the project. Xayaburi Power managing director Thanawat Trivisavet told the Bangkok Post in July that it had “applied the best technology in the world” and spent $633 million on new fish ladders alone to help fish swimming upstream get past the dam.
The MRC secretariat, after reviewing the redesign, said in January that the changes were likely to help, but added that it could not tell by how much because the company had not shared enough data or documents.
Eyler said the gates built into the dam to let river sediment through could work in theory. But the more they stay open, the less power the dam can generate. He was doubtful the Xayaburi could generate enough power to sell the amount of electricity it has promised Thailand, its main customer, and also let enough sediment pass to keep the Mekong basin properly replenished.
A fisherman pulls a fishing net from his boat in the Mekong River in Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, July 24, 2019.
As for the upgraded fish passages, he said they were modeled on rivers with lower migrating fish volumes and may or may not be able to handle the larger numbers that typically swim through the site of the Xayaburi.
“It’s so tragic that the fate of these downstream countries are essentially left to the role of the dice on whether these untested mitigation efforts will work,” Eyler said.
Short of scrapping the project, he said the developers could have tempered the risks by building the dam farther upstream, where it would block fewer migrating fish, or along a tributary, where, if designed right, it could deliver just as much power.
“But that type of thinking is not currently being put into place in Lao or in the rest of the Mekong basin, and that’s why the Mekong is dying the death of a thousand cuts by having these dams go up,” Eyler said.
He also sees cause for hope, though.
Keo Rattanak, the head of Cambodia’s main electricity supplier, EDC, recently set a target to source 20 percent of its power from solar energy, and said he did not foresee two dams on the drawing board for the country’s own stretch of the Mekong moving forward. Thailand, as the main hydropower customer for both Laos and Myanmar, has also been talking of cutting back on energy imports in favor of developing other renewables itself.
Pianporn of International Rivers said that in some months Thailand already has twice as much installed power capacity as it uses.
“So we have to go back to the energy discussion, not ‘build or not to build the dam,’ but what do we actually need?” she said. If the answers power companies and policymakers continue coming up with involve the Mekong, she added, “it will be a river no more.”
Xayaburi Power and Ch Karnchang, the Thai company that built the dam, did not reply to multiple requests for an interview. Lao government officials at the ministries of energy and natural resources could not be reached for comment.
