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Thailand: Ministry to revive 50 unfinished projects
The Energy Ministry plans to dust off 50 unfinished power projects under the 2013 Quick Win initiative to be promoted under the Energy for All scheme for community-owned power projects.
“This is faster than launching 10 pilot projects under the scheme by June 2020,” said Energy Minister Sontirat Sontijirawong, presiding over the first round of public hearings yesterday.
The hearing gathered opinions from roughly 200 stakeholders such as state agencies, state utilities, power companies, banks and non-governmental organisations.
Mr Sontirat said the Quick Win initiative was launched during 2012-13 for renewable power projects from fast-growing plants such as giant napier grass, acacia and bamboo, or new species of plants that can be used as biomass and biogas fuels.
Some 50 unfinished projects were put off by the military government in 2014. Their applications were granted licences to develop and operate power projects.
The Energy for All scheme has a preliminary concept to bring a variety of renewable resources — agricultural waste, waste water, animal dung and farm products — to be fed into community-owned power projects.
Solid waste is excluded from the scheme because the licence-granting process is handled by the Interior Ministry.
The first public hearing saw some stakeholders offer tentative business models for the scheme.
One joint venture model sees private companies holding a 70-90% stake while local communities own a 10-30% stake.
The legal entities of communities that would form joint ventures will be agricultural cooperatives, Village Funds and community enterprises, said Mr Sontirat.
But details of benefit-sharing and feedstock for the power projects were not finalised at the first public hearing.
The Energy Ministry will hold another round of public hearings before reaching a final conclusion.
Chuwit Jungtanasomboon, chief executive of North East Rubber Plc, said the company applied for the Quick Win initiative in 2013 with a budget of 500 million baht. It aimed to construct two power projects from napier grass in Buri Ram province with power generation of 2 megawatts each.
He said the company developed two biogas power projects in 2013 that were delayed for several years. But the two projects completed construction with a schedule to operate in November and December.
“The two power plants will apply for the Energy for All scheme as the company has agreements with local napier growers on 400 rai and owns a 1,200-rai plantation in Buri Ram to feed grass and animal dung to the biogas power projects,” he said.
Source: https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/1768644/ministry-to-revive-50-unfinished-projects