Page 11 - AsiaElec Week 19

AsiaElec
NEWS IN BRIEF
AsiaElec
INVESTMENT
ADB Ventures to start
investing in climate &
gender impact Asia startups
ADB Ventures, a new venture platform to support and invest in startups offering tech- based impact solutions to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has just announced that it will start making investments. It follows the success of its first inaugural investment fund, which raised $50mn, exceeding its target. As the world begins to slowly recover from coronavirus, ADB Ventures will also screen projects that seek to address both the pandemic and resilience to future health and climate crises.
Set up in late January, ADB Ventures
has achieved the close of its first inaugural investment fund with $50mn earlier this month, which will allow it to start investing in SDG-focused tech startups based in Asia-Pacific. It is supported by the Clean Technology Fund, South Korea’s Ministry of Economy and Finance, Finland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Nordic Development Fund.
“These commitments by some of the world’s most forward-thinking development funders will be catalytic in achieving ADB’s vision to convene one of the region’s largest impact venture platforms,” said Mike Barrow, ADB director general for private sector operations.
The inaugural investment fund under ADB Ventures has a 17-year fund life, and will specifically target early stage and growth stage cleantech, agriculture technology and health technology businesses that are working on climate and gender innovations.
Current projects under ADB Ventures Labs include The Building Energy Challenge, a ASEAN-based programme encouraging efficient energy management and smart buildings, Singapore-based water technology accelerator Imagine H2O Asia, circular economy and waste management solutions focused Travel Lab Asia, and the Future Food Asia Awards 2020, which works to identify agritech and food security solutions.
ADB
COAL
South Korea’s KEPCO bans Australian lab giant
A South Korean power utility is banning Australian laboratory giant ALS from work on coal shipments, marking financial fallout from
a fake-analysis scandal, Australian Financial Review reported.
Korea South-East Power, one of the subsidiaries of NYSE-listed KEPCO, put Brisbane-based ALS on a blacklist in two bidding documents this month.
The bids are for shipments of 290,000 metric tons to 310,000 tonnes of coal. “ALS Limited ... is not allowed as an international independent inspection agency,” say the bid documents.
ALS was not banned in previous bidding documents viewed by The Australian Financial Review.
The moves follow ALS in April telling the market its Australian coal unit had “manually amended without justification” between 45 per cent and 50 per cent of final certificates since 2007. All the changes boosted the quality of the coal, and ALS is one of the major players in the Australian export sector.
ALS, which said an internal investigation found no other wrongdoing in other divisions, has since removed a backdoor in processes that allowed changes in the coal certification unit.
An ALS spokesman said it had not received any formal communication from Korea South-East Power. But he said control checks since the investigation had been carried out on more than 650 certificates “to ensure there is direct correlation with all ... test data”.
“Investigations into this matter are continuing,” a police spokesperson said.
GAS-FIRED GENERATION
JAPEX starts up Fukushima gas power plant unit
Japan Petroleum Exploration (JAPEX) announced that Fukushima Natural Gas Power Plant commenced commercial operation of the No.1 unit on April 30, 2020. The power plant has been under construction by Fukushima Gas Power Co., Ltd. (hereinafter “FGP”), which is a project company to promote the project of natural gas-fired power generation at Soma Port
in Shinchi Town, Fukushima Prefecture (hereinafter “the project”) with the business partners including JAPEX.
This power plant uses regasified LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) for fuel, given a lower environmental burden, and has a generating capacity of 1.18mn kW by two-generation units of GTCC (Gas Turbine CombinedCycle) that achieves higher efficiency.
FGP and the business partners decided
on the commercialisation of the project and construction of the power plant as the project basis in October 2016. By proceeding with the construction of the plants from October 2017, the No.1 unit achieved the first parallel operation in December 2019.
Since completion of all independent inspection, which is defined by the Electricity Business Act, the No.1 unit of the power plant commenced the commercial operation on April 30, 2020. Along with the commercial operation commencement of the power plant, the operation concerning LNG,
which is procured as the generation fuel by each partner, began on the same day. Such
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