Page 14 - AsiaElec Week 06 2021

AsiaElec NEWS IN BRIEF AsiaElec

plant currently being built in Laos.
Electricty Generating Authority of
Thailand is the country’s leading state-owned
power utility, and falls under the Ministry of
Energy. It is responsible for electric power
generation and transmission for the whole
country, as well as bulk electric energy sales.

SOL AR
Viet Nam has installed 6

coal plants’ worth of solar the latest burst of new rooftop installations, coal as fuel. The joint venture aims to reduce
its emissions to virtually zero by 2050 and
the country now generates a quarter of its
in a year electricity from solar. plans to use ammonia as fuel for power
Solar has also received a boost from
generation, and also hydrogen in stages.
One of the few bright spots in COVID-19 changes to the law on public/private By the 2040s, Jera hopes to operate power
pandemic has been a leap in the amount of partnerships in Viet Nam which mean that generation equipment that will only need
electricity being generated from renewable investments in coal-fired stations no longer ammonia as fuel.
sources. automatically attract a government guarantee. Ammonia is produced by extracting
2020 saw the biggest fall in energy demand “Changes to Vietnam’s power market hydrogen from natural gas -- a process that
since World War Two, according to the structure and emerging competition from generates large amounts of carbon dioxide.
International Energy Agency (IEA). That’s a alternative and renewable technologies are Jera, together with Petronas, will work on
drop seven times larger than that caused by also facilitating a shift in focus away from producing ammonia through electricity
the global financial crisis of 2008/9. conventional coal power investments,” says generated from renewable energy to eliminate
At the same time, the share of energy Thu Vu, Energy Analyst at the Institute for carbon dioxide emissions.
generated from renewables leapt 7% last Energy Economics and Financial Analysis The companies plan to begin a
year. “It’s mostly driven by solar energy,” (IEEFA). demonstration experiment within the next
said Dr Fatih Birol, IEA Executive Director. WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM year in which coal and ammonia will be
“Renewables appear to be immune from mixed and used as fuel at a thermal power
COVID.” plant in Aichi Prefecture, located in central
One place that illustrates this trend is Viet RENEWABLES Japan. The experiment will provide the
Nam, which offered generous incentives to companies with more knowledge and will
households and businesses to install rooftop Japan’s Jera to produce support their journey to creating a power
solar last year. By the time the scheme ended, generation facility that will burn only
9.3 gigawatts of extra generating capacity ammonia for power with ammonia.
had been added – equivalent to six coal-fired One major challenge will be profitability.
plants. Malaysia’s Petronas It is said that ammonia fuel can be
The country, which has previously been 50% more expensive than coal. Ammonia
heavily dependent on coal for electricity Jera, a joint fuel-procurement venture produced through recycled energy could
generation, now has more than 101,000 between Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power and become even more costly.
rooftop installations on homes, offices and Chubu Electric Power, will begin ammonia Jera aims to reduce costs by taking charge
factories, creating a 25-fold increase in its production free of carbon dioxide emissions of every process, from development to
solar generating capacity in just one year. through a partnership with a Malaysian state- procurement to power generation.
A key feature of the incentive scheme was owned enterprise, Nikkei reported. Japan leads the world in efforts related
a generous feed-in tariff for solar users to sell Production will follow the signing of a to the use of ammonia as a fuel for power
surplus power to the national electricity grid memorandum of understanding between generation. On Monday the Ministry of
at a price guaranteed for 20 years. Viet Nam Jera and Malaysian oil and gas giant Petronas. Economy, Trade and Industry said that it
favoured rooftop solar because it does not use The two have agreed to use renewable energy, has set a target of introducing 3mn tons of
scarce land or require new transmission lines. like hydropower, to manufacture ammonia ammonia fuel per year by 2030.
Among the sites for a new installation without releasing CO2. Further details on the
was the rooftop of the Da Nang offices of production site, as well as production capacity,
Viet Nam’s Central Power Corporation will be determined at a later date.
(EVNCPC), the state-owned electricity For Jera, Japan’s largest power generation
company. The solar panels generate an average company, the move highlights its efforts to
of over 100 kilowatt hours per day to power decarbonise its fuel as the electric power
the offices. industry faces calls to reduce carbon
The scheme is not the country’s first big emissions and become more eco-friendly.
spend on renewables. Back in 2019, it made a Jera accounts for about 10% of the
major investment by installing 4.5 gigawatts of country’s ‘s total emissions of carbon dioxide,
conventional ground-based solar power. With with its thermal power plants using gas and

P14 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 06 10•February•2021