Laos power plant misses jumbo payout

Why did authorities recently give the final go-ahead to a Thailand-invested lignite mine and power station to be built only five-to-seven kilometers from the festival village of Hongsa? Sayaboury province, which cuddles like a spoon into Thailand, is Laos’ center for domesticated elephants. It thus maintains the major gene pool needed for the survival of the species, which is fast dwindling.

Lignite is a dirty fossil fuel, so heavy in sulfur, carbon and water that often the only effective way of getting energy from its source is to process the lignite at the mine’s mouth.
A 2007 New Zealand report called lignite the “wettest, most inefficient and polluting coal there is” and noted in its assessment of a plan there to convert lignite to liquid fuels that one lignite facility would produce twice as much carbon dioxide per year as the total amount generated by coal-fired electricity in all of New Zealand.

Environmentalists are now calling on governments to consider bringing international sanctions against countries that knowingly initiate high-carbon projects, such as the plans Laos has for Hongsa. Tellingly, the original project was rejected as uneconomic because it would have generated a mere 684 megawatts of power. The Thais and Laos have since been dickering over the price of the electricity and the plant’s generating capacity.

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Geologist Surasit Areesiri of World Drilling Services, who did the geophysical analysis for the mine, did not respond to questions about energy outputs and economics. Steve Raines, a coal mining engineer in Woollongong, New South Wales, who attended the first elephant festival in Sayaboury, agreed that the mine will create huge problems unless it is carefully built and monitored.

“I don’t see much reason to build lignite mines of that energy output unless there is nothing else. Hasn’t Laos thought of renewables?” he said. “To run a safe and environmentally clean lignite mine these days costs a fortune. Lignite is one of those old-fashioned fuels that we choose to avoid now unless it’s pulling 20-plus megajoules. It’s a big price to pay so your neighbors can run air conditioners. The modern approach would be to leave it in the ground and go with renewables.”

The operation of “brown coal” plants, particularly in combination with strip mining, is often politically contentious due to environmental and safety concerns. Its something that Laos’ National Assembly is said to be concerned about in areas where eco-tourism is taking off.

Asia Times