Time to use the resources we have in abundance

The scorching heat and glaring sunlight this summer might cause people to wonder why we rely so little on the sun’s energy. Thailand enjoys generous sunlight all year round. Bangkok, even with its smog and pollution, has an average of five hours of sunlight a day. The average number of hours of sunlight per day range from 4.23 in August, in the middle of the rainy season, to 6.09 in March, in the middle of the hot, dry season, according to the United States Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Prices of fossil fuels such as petroleum and natural gas are increasing, coal-fired power plants threaten the health of local communities, and opposition is mounting against environmentally unfriendly alternative sources of energy such as hydropower, which require large tracts of land for dam construction. Nuclear power might be a cost-effective alternative choice in many countries, but there has been increasingly strong opposition to this option in Thailand following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011.
It is time for the government to seriously consider increasing our reliance on renewable energy sources, which are friendlier to the environment and healthier for people.
Thailand has high potential for renewable energy production, including solar and wind power, as well as biofuels. Current technologies for all these alternative sources are already well established here. Investments have been made by both state agencies and private businesses on projects for renewable energy, but the size of investment is still far from allowing them to compete with existing power plants that rely on fossil fuels.
Renewable energy sources – mostly hydropower – account for only 15 per cent of Thailand’s total energy generation, with the rest coming from natural gas and coal, according to Chulalongkorn University researchers. As a result, Thailand has been left vulnerable to fluctuations in energy prices from international suppliers for many years. Under the government’s Alternative Energy Development Plan, renewable energy is supposed to make up 20 per cent of the country’s total energy consumption by 2022.
Thailand is particularly well suited for solar-farm development because it has long peak-sun hours (when the sun creates 1,000 watts of energy over one square metre of land for one hour) and low land costs in many suitable areas. Joint ventures have set up solar farms in some provinces, and the government has provided subsidies for solar-power generation.
It costs much more to invest in solar energy than it does to invest in conventional sources of power generation. However, advancements in technology will help lower the costs, and together with government subsidies, future investments in solar energy should be able to flourish in Thailand.
Attention, however, should not focus on only on solar farms as businesses. Subsidies should also be given to homeowners so that they can afford to install solar-cell panels to generate electricity for domestic use. Local production of solar-cell panels should be subsidised to make them more affordable. For the average homeowner with limited land, solar energy can be a convenient option for alternative energy production compared to other sources, such as wind power or biomass fuel.
Some “green” buildings in Thailand have already installed photovoltaic panels to generate electricity for their own use. Solar energy is being used in remote areas of the country, such as islands or mountain villages, where it is much costlier to pipe in electricity.
However, solar energy has never been part of the mainstream in Thailand. One major reason is that it is still cheaper to buy electricity.
But because it is becoming much costlier to produce power from fossil fuels, it makes sense to encourage more electricity generation from renewable sources. Thailand has the resources needed for such power generation – sunlight, wind and biomass – and the technologies are readily available for the Kingdom to head in that direction. What we need now is greater public awareness and the political will to make it happen.