Thailand / External Reports

Opinion piece published in the Bangkok Post

This report put forward a vision of a clean and profitable Power Dvelopment Plan (PDP) for Thailand. It demonstrates that Thailand's potential for meeting its future growth in energy demand through a decentralized energy mix of energy efficiency, renewable energy and Combined Heat and Power is large enough to negate the need for the new non-committed centralized coal and gas generation capacity and hydropower imports specified in the government's PDP.

The Salween River - Southeast Asia's longest undammed river - supports a wealth of biological and cultural diversity. Its rich natural resources support up to 10 million people from its headwaters in China to its estuary in Mon State, Burma. But its days as a productive natural lifeline may be numbered in Burma, where the repressive military dictatorship is conspiring with the Thai government, Thai investors and Chinese dam builders to build a series of large dams in civil war zones in Burma. The dam cascade, secretly negotiated over the past decade, will be built in an area where peoples of a variety of ethnic minority groups are systematically being displaced - or worse, robbed, tortured, raped or executed. The dams are part of a military strategy by the dictatorship to increase control over the ethnic peoples of Burma, their lands, and their rich natural resources.

Despite the high risk of operating in a war zone, and in what Transparency International rates as one of the world's five most corrupt countries, the Salween dams, estimated to cost at least US $10 billion, would be by far the biggest ever investment in Burma. The dams inside Burma and on its borders would have a combined capacity of up to 14,000 megawatts (MW) and would include the single largest dam in Southeast Asia, the Ta Sang. A recent spate of agreements has solidified construction plans, although it is currently unclear how the September 2006 coup d'etat in Thailand will affect these plans.

EGAT's Power Development Plan (PDP) 2004, which was approved by the Thailand Cabinet, is based on an unrealistically high peak demand forecast. In addition, less expensive, environmentally or socially superior alternatives are not taken into consideration. The PDP is thus likely to lead to both over investment and misallocated investment.