EDF Trading, one of the world’s top three carbon credit buyers, is considering up to six more projects in Thailand for next year in addition to 10 projects in which it already signed contractual purchasing agreements.
EDF’s portfolio in Thailand includes clean development mechanism (CDM) projects in biomass, biogas from waste water, landfill gas capturing, and wind farms.
“We expect to have five to six more projects in Thailand next year with projects under discussion including a waste heat generator (WHG), biomass and energy efficiency projects,” said Suchai Lertpichet, a representative of EDF in Thailand.
Siam Cement Group would partner in the WHG project.
EDF is a unit of Electricite de France, the largest power utility in Europe with installed capacity of 129,000 megawatts, and EDF has more than 110 CDM projects.
CDM is the mechanism that allows industrialised nations to buy carbon credits from projects in developing countries to meet their emission reduction commitments under the Kyoto Protocol by 2012.
Carbon credits are used in emission trading schemes globally in the form of certified emission reduction (CER) certificates.
“The sector is going to get a boost from a coming tax incentive for carbon credit revenue granted by the Finance Ministry,” said Mr Suchai.
The 7.7-megawatt Decha Bio Greens biomass project in Suphan Buri, one of the projects signed with EDF, is in the verification process and expects to get CER issuance at the beginning of next year.
CER prices have increased since the beginning of this year and are now quoted at 13.89.
EDF executives attended a renewable energy forum yesterday called France Green Tech in which a number of companies expressed keen interest in investing in Thailand.
MPO, the European leader in optical disks, cited Thailand as a promising investment location for its new photovoltaic (PV) cell business outside France.
The company has spent 24 million on research and development of its innovative PV20 which it says can lower emissions by 20%. It spent another 45 million to develop a manufacturing plant of PV20 silicon wafers in France with the first phase coming onstream in 2011, said MPO chairman Loic de Poix.
“Thailand is very attractive for our investment given the country’s high consumption of electricity with no (definite) nuclear programme in place,” he said.
MPO’s suggested PV investment in Thailand would require roughly 15 million. The company has produced optical disks in Thailand for 16 years.
