Lately, China has dominated any renewable energy news that comes out of South East Asia and not without good reason. However, while China is busy surging forward into a future populated in part by renewable energy, other South East Asian nations have been working on some serious projects in both solar energy, wind power, and other renewable energy sectors. Of all the countries making waves, however, South Korea and Thailand have made the most recent developments worth taking notes on.
News coming from Thailand today has outlined a new deal the country has made with a solar energy company to ship solar panels to Thailand as a part of their latest renewable energy plan. The company in question, Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd., has been contracted by Thailand to provide 9.43 megawatts of solar panels in order to complement a larger quantity that had previously shipped to Thailand earlier this year. The solar panels are to be used as a part of Thailand’s plan to build a forty four megawatt solar energy power plant along with the Bangchak Petroleum Public Company. Once completed, the energy will be plugged into the grid in order to supply electricity to a large portion of the surrounding areas.
The plant is expected to substantially add to Thailand’s overall plan of achieving twenty percent renewable energy by 2022. So far, Thailand has thrown most of their support behind solar energy projects in the belief that they could possibly one day power the entire nation exclusively with solar energy. While they have only just started down the road towards adopting renewable energy, many have said that Thailand has done well in quickly identifying and adopting the technologies that work best for them and that the country should be on track to attain their goal.
In South Korea last week, the plan was released for the construction of a 2,500 megawatt offshore wind power plant in the Yellow Sea. The announcement of the plant comes not too long after China’s own announcement that they would be building a 1,000 megawatt offshore wind power plant. The plant is expected to cost a staggering $8.2 billion and to be built over the course of three stages that would end sometime in 2019. Once completed, the plant should help push South Korea towards the lead of nations that are adopting clean energy technology.
With both Thailand and South Korea making huge strides towards renewable energy, it would seem that South East Asia is in good hands. This is especially true considering the multitude of other nations, like China or Japan, that are working towards renewable energy goals. It will be interesting to see just how far each country has gone to reach their goal, or even to surpass it, in the next ten to fifteen years.
Article by Richard Cooke, appearing courtesy Justmeans.
