Allied Biofuels FEED Meeting Backs Q1 2027 FID for US$6.1 Billion Uzbekistan SAF Project

Energy Minister Eknat Prompan has unveiled a major energy restructuring plan, under which the government will reserve 10,000 megawatts of rooftop solar generating capacity specifically for the public, set at roughly 5 kilowatts per household, to spread the right across households nationwide. Under the new approach, the state will buy back surplus power and apply it as a discount on the same billing cycle's electricity bill. A 5-kilowatt system can generate about 600 to 700 units per month, worth roughly 2,000 baht or more, and the state will provide a subsidy of 50,000 baht, with the income from the generated power used to pay it off. The equipment is expected to be fully paid off in about 7 to 10 years. On cutting permitting steps, coordination will be handled solely through the distribution utilities, with a target of about 1 week for inspection and acceptance in self-consumption installations, and no more than 1 month in cases of selling power back. For the new Power Development Plan, or PDP, three goals are set: cleanest, most stable, and fairest. It targets raising the share of clean energy from the current level of just over 20% to close to 50% within 10 years, and no less than 65% in the long term, while reducing reliance on spot-market LNG in favor of long-term contracts, and opening the door to future technologies including hydrogen, geothermal, solid oxide fuel cells, and small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs. Meanwhile, the public electricity cost that has been embedded in the power tariff structure for 30 to 40 years amounts to a burden of about 18 billion baht per year. The government has removed this burden from the structure and has already implemented a measure capping the first 200 units of household electricity at 3 baht per unit.

Eight companies including Daimler Truck, Volvo Group, Toyota Motor Corp., Bosch, Air Liquide, TotalEnergies, TEAL Mobility and MB Energy announced at IAA Transportation in Hanover a joint effort to make hydrogen trucking commercially viable in Europe by 2030, with Germany as the template and a request that the European Commission and other national governments copy it. Daimler Truck brought its Mercedes-Benz NextGenH2 Truck to the show floor and plans to put a small series of 100 into customer operations from the end of 2026, with the first batch of 50 already sold, said Karin Rådström, president and CEO of Daimler Truck, who added that the company is investing a mid-three-digit million euro amount in hydrogen trucks through the end of the decade. The NextGenH2 runs more than 1,000 kilometers on a single fill of liquid hydrogen and carries 1.3 metric tons more payload than Daimler's battery-electric eActros 600. Both truck makers named €6 ($6.92) a kilogram as the hydrogen price point at which the business case works, and Rådström said Europe's 187 hydrogen stations are mostly built at 350 bar, which does not give trucking the added range it needs. Germany's federal transport minister, Steffen Bilger, said a government funding call covering hydrogen refueling stations and hydrogen-powered commercial vehicles together drew more than €450 million in applications against the €220 million available, with bids seeking more than 70 high-capacity stations and 800 heavy-duty trucks.